Roland's Journal
by BlazingPhoenix17
Summary: Roland: Hero, Savior, Champion, Martyr. That's what he's remembered as these days, after leading the Crimson Raiders for so long against Handsome Jack's armies. But what was he like back in the day? Back when he and the first Vault Hunters had their adventure across the Pandoran wastes? Well luckily for us we have his journal to tell us exactly how it went down. Not as expected.
1. Fyrestone

Fryestone

ROLAND: Roland's log. Day 15 on Pandora. I've arrived in a small town called Fryestone looking for a lead on the Vault. At least, that's the goal. I have no idea if I'm actually going to get anywhere in this place. Even for Pandora, this town seems like the middle of nowhere. Took us hours to drive here from Sanctuary. The driver, Marcus, would not shut up with his tales and stories about his family history. Half of them sounded so insane they couldn't be true, but the other half sounded so insane they _had_ to be true. And then some of them started to overlap…

LILITH: Hey, whatcha doing over there?

ROLAND: Oh, hey there Lilith. I was just doing my journal for the day.

LILITH: You keep a journal? [snort] Of course you keep a journal. A retired soldier, on the run from his former employers, seeking his fortune with mercenary work. You're practically required to have a journal to fit the cliche.

ROLAND: Uh… if you say so. I just… I do this to keep track of my progress, and so I don't lose sight of where I'm supposed to be. I've had trouble with… listlessness in the past.

LILITH: Relax man, I'm just messing with you. It's neat you try to stay on top of things like that. So, what did you say so far?

ROLAND: Not much, I just started. I was saying that we arrived here in Fryestone after a very long bus ride.

LILITH: Oh god yes, it took _forever_. So glad we finally arrived, even if we were greeted by a claptrap of all things.

ROLAND: Eh, he wasn't so bad. He didn't try to bore us with stories at least. Anyway, yes, when we got off the bus we were met by a local claptrap, who started to lead us into town, after we checked in with the local New-U Station.

LILITH: You, uh, you gonna mention the…

ROLAND: I'd really rather not at this point. At least… not yet.

LILITH: Okay, okay, I getcha. Just… yeah, let's not.

ROLANDS: Let's. Anyway, it turns out we arrived at the right time, since Fryestone came under attack by bandits moments after we showed up. We rushed through the edge of town so we could save the inhabitants and… It just occurred to me that I haven't actually said who 'we' are yet. I should do that, right?

LILITH: I think so, yeah. Want me to start?

ROLAND: I'll set you up first. Right, so, Lilith here is a Siren, the second one I've ever met in my life.

LILITH: Wait, second? Who's the first?

ROLAND: An officer in the Crimson Lance, Captain Steele. She was in command of a unit separate from mine, but I saw her once when our units were sent on a joint mission.

LILITH: What was she like?

ROLAND: An utter bitch. Loud mouthed, self assured, and high on the Lance's bullshit. The worst example of their self-aggrandizing and god-complex. It wasn't long after she showed up that I left.

LILITH: Oh… Well shit, I was hoping she'd be kinda cool. Never met another Siren before, but the ones I've heard about have all been kinda disappointing.

ROLAND: You're not disappointing. [pause] I mean, compared to Steele, anything's better.

LILITH: Gee, thanks. I appreciate it though.

ROLAND: You're welcome. Alright, the other two. First is Mordecai, a very talented sniper. Almost inhumanly talented actually. I have no idea how he managed to line up three bandits for a single shot like that earlier today…

MORDECAI: Hah, you kidding? Those idiots made it easy for me! I barely had to calculate the ricochet. So what're you doing over here?

LILITH: Roland's making a journal, he was just describing you.

MORDECAI: Seriously? That's cool man. As for me, all you need to know is I'm the best sniper in the sector, period. Ain't nobody better than me that I've ever met. As for why I'm here on Pandora, eh, why not I guess. New animals to hunt, some loot to collect. Felt like it would be a fun time. Haven't been disappointed so far.

LILITH: That makes one of us.

ROLAND: I'm sure things will improve as we continue our searching. Hey, Brick, want to introduce yourself?

BRICK: [incoherent grunt]

LILITH: Is that a yes or a no?

MORDECAI: Pretty sure that's a [grunts]

LILITH: Thanks for the translation.

BRICK: My name's Brick. I like to kill things. Pandora's got lots of stuff to kill, and better weapons to kill stuff with. Makes me happy. Vault's the biggest loot pile in the sector. Finding that will make me _very_ happy.

ROLAND: O...kay. Thanks for sharing Brick.

BRICK: [happy grunt]

ROLAND: Right, well, that's everyone. Now where was I…

LILITH: We were clearing the bandits out of town.

ROLAND: Oh yeah, thanks. So, we cleared out the bandits, only took a few minutes. They were just a bunch of morons with guns. No tactics, no leader, all white-quality gear. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

MORDECAI: They say rak in a barrel out here.

ROLAND: Of course they do. After we killed the bandits, we spoke to the town's doctor, Doctor Zed. Turns out Zed is the one who maintains the health vendors in this part of the planet, even though he lost his medical license due to… something, I didn't care to listen to the story.

LILITH: He seems kinda hung up about that, mentioned it a few times more than necessary.

ROLAND: The doctor thanked us for saving the town, even though literally nobody else came out of their homes after the bandits were dead. Actually, I haven't seen anyone at all come out of those houses. Are we sure there are actually people living here?

BRICK: They're in there. I can smell their fear.

[long pause]

MORDECAI: How do you know what fear smells like?

BRICK: Experience.

ROLAND: Anyway, after we met up with the doctor he asked us to help secure the area around Fryestone so that the town would be safe. Apparently the bandits who attacked are under the command of a bandit lord named Sledge.

LILITH: Sounds like a swell guy.

MORDECAI: Can't wait to kill him. Hope he makes me work for the shot.

ROLAND: First step for securing the town was killing a few packs of skags wandering around the perimeter. I should mention, skags are like dogs that have thick hides, split jaws, and the bigger ones have lash-like tongues and spit acid. And these are some of the common _prey_ animals on this planet.

MORDECAI: They're predator and prey. Which each one is depends on who is eating who at the moment.

ROLAND: As we were killing the skags though, more bandits showed up. We dealt with them easily, but they damaged the claptrap that was escorting us. We were… asked to repair him a-

MORDECAI: And you just haaad to listen, didn't you?

ROLAND: There was no reason not to fix him.

MORDECAI: There was no reason _to_ fix him either!

LILITH: Guys, guys, relax. It's just a claptrap. They're really not that bad.

MORDECAI: Oh you say that now. Just wait til you have to keep listening to them over and over again for days on end. See how tolerable they are then.

ROLAND: Either way, I found a repair kit in town and fixed it up. Wasn't hard really. Just a few wires were singed and his chassis damaged. A bit of nano-spray fixed him up good as new. When everything that wasn't us was dead, we went back to Zed to report in. Apparently the bandits had a base camp nearby that they'd been using to attack Fryestone. Guess where we were sent next.

LILITH: They were way too surprised when we showed up. I mean really, what did they think happened to their buddies that made them not come back for so long?

BRICK: They were idiots, but it's always fun to knock some idiot heads together.

MORDECAI: Yeah, literally.

ROLAND: Clearing the camp went smoothly, even found a bit of loot from their weapons chest, though nothing spectacular. The best quality thing they had was green, and it was still rather pathetic compared to the rifle Mordecai already has. Sold well with Zed though. On the way back, Zed had us go meet with a local farmer named T. K. Baha, who knows a bit about the area. Zed thinks T. K. will know where to find the bandit lieutenant who was commanding the idiots who were attacking Fryestone.

LILITH: Can I just say T. K. is, like, really cool? A blind, crippled guy living alone in his shack on _Pandora_ and is still alive? That's badass.

MORDECAI: He's a nice guy, even. Really upbeat considering his circumstances.

BRICK: He is brave. I like him.

ROLAND: When we met T. K. he needed our help getting his food back, since skags broke into his meat stores. We went to kill them and take the meat back, but… it turns out the meat they stole was… skag meat.

MORDECAI: Yeah, skags are all cannibals. They'll eat other skags just as happily as anything else. Also, don't knock skag meat. That stuff tastes surprisingly good when properly grilled and seasoned.

LILITH: If you say so…

BRICK: I like mine red with most of the blood still in it. [long pause] Don't question my tastes.

ROLAND: We delivered T. K. his remaining meat, as well as a bit extra from all the skags we killed, and in return he told us about Skag Gully, which is where the lieutenant known as Nine Toes lives.

LILITH: I still can't believe there's a bandit who actually calls himself 'Nine Toes'. Do these guys have any imagination?

MORDECAI: Insanity tends to mess with creativity in my experience.

ROLAND: Anyway, right now we've returned to Fryestone to stay the night. We'll go deal with Nine Toes and his remaining bandits tomorrow. From there, I suppose we'll try to fix up the car station-

LILITH: Catch-A-Ride station.

ROLAND: I'm not calling it that. We'll fix that up and start exploring the Arid Badlands proper so we can remove Sledge and continue looking for leads to the Vault. For the first time since arriving on Pandora, I actually have a plan, as well as some help seeing it through. It's… nice to be part of a group again.

LILITH: Aaaaw, that's cute.

MORDECAI: Hey, leave him alone Lilith. Working alone is boring, dull, and very stressful. I should know.

BRICK: Badassery is always more fulfilling when you have onlookers to share it with.

ROLAND: Thank you Brick. Well, I think that's enough for today. Roland out.

A/N: **Borderlands Remastered **was a hell of a thing, wasn't it? Such a wonderful nostalgia trip, despite a few of the old hiccups hanging around, along with some new ones... (seriously, why does the main menu lag so much past playthrough 2? How did they fuck that up?), but overall I loved going back to the original looter-shooter. Loved it so much I played through it with each of the characters at least through playthrough 1, and while I was doing that I decided to have a bit of extra fun by writing this fic in the style of **Gaige's ECHO Logs**, which was a wonderful pseudo-novelization of the second game. I loved the idea so much I always considered doing my own version for the first game, and the remaster was the best excuse to just go ahead and do it. Hence, I did... literally last year. Last _decade_ now actually... And for some reason I never sat down and tried to publish it. UNTIL NOW! That's right, New Year's resolution chaps! That's what's making me actually sit down and finished editing and posting this beauty. Good news for me is that it's already entirely written up and finished, so no wondering if this will sit incomplete for years on end. Like my other fics... ... I'm working on it, that's what the resolution is about. ANYWAY! Let us celebrate the new decade by reveling in the one _before_ the last, and listen in on Roland's Journal. Enjoy folks!

(P.S. I haven't played 3 yet, so no spoilers for that in the reviews please. Yes, yes, I know I'm crap for not having played it yet, leave me alone. Monster Hunter Iceborne came out. Speaking of...)


	2. Skag Gully

Skag Gully

ROLAND: Roland's log. Day 16 on Pandora. I am very glad that we didn't try to take on Skag Gully yesterday, because it took all day today to scour it all.

MORDECAI: Totally worth it!

BRICK: I killed shit in awesome ways. I am content.

ROLAND: We started the day by making our way over to the entrance to Skag Gully, which was apparently boarded up by T. K. a while ago after his wife died. How he did that when he was missing a leg and was blind is beyond me.

LILITH: I think he made the claptrap do it.

MORDECAI: That just raises further questions though.

ROLAND: Not important. Using a keg of dynamite he left there in case he ever wanted to get back in, we blew up the barricade so we could get into the gully.

BRICK: It was a very nice explosion.

ROLAND: Once we got into the Gully, we had a choice to make. We could go after Nine Toes immediately or complete the other tasks that T. K. had asked us to do as a favor to him, namely gathering more seeds for his farm and murdering the skag who killed his wife and took his leg. We debated for a while, but we decided Nine Toes was more immediately important and we went in the direction that showed human activity. Or rather, recent human activity.

MORDECAI: You'd be surprised where you find random folks hanging out on this planet. Some have things to hide, some just don't like other people, so they hang out in nasty places. Usually doesn't work out for them.

ROLAND: As we were about to head out, we found an echo recorder next to the bodies of some bandits. I scanned it to see what was on it, but the information was encoded… poorly. Knowing that these bandits all work for Sledge, I decided to try and hack into it so I could find out more about his operations, but I needed more samples of the program to do the hacking, so I set my echo-locator to find nearby echo devices. As luck would have it, one of those lead us straight to Nine Toes' lair.

LILITH: Wasn't much of a lair, honestly. They just strung a bunch of prefab junk over a crevice to a cave and called it a day. Also, _what the hell is up with those midgets?_

[pause]

MORDECAI: Why are you looking at me?

LILITH: You seem to be pretty knowledgeable about Pandora so far. Figured you had an answer to this one too.

MORDECAI: Lilith, NOBODY has an answer for the midgets. Nobody.

LILITH: Really? There's no information on them at all?

MORDECAI: Nada. Lo siento.

LILITH: Well crap.

ROLAND: I honestly think that the midgets were a small problem overall. [pause] What? Why are you staring at me.

LILITH: I can't tell what's worse. The fact that you made that pun, or that you did it unknowingly.

ROLAND: … anyway, getting past Nine Toes' guards was barely worth our attention, but then we met the man himself. And… well, he wasn't much of a challenge himself. The moment we entered his 'arena', Lilith did her phasewalk thing, which is where she disappears from our reality then reappears again in an explosion, and popped in right in Nine Toes' face, knocking him off his feet. Before he could even get up Mordecai had already put a bullet through his face.

MORDECAI: What do you expect, man? The pendejo didn't even have a shield on!

BRICK: Disappointing. Very disappointing.

ROLAND: Either way, Nine Toes himself wasn't a problem. The problem came when his two pet skags showed up to avenge his death, and both were armored with steel plates over their bodies, making it very hard to land good hits on them. Myself, Mordecai, and Lilith had to kite one of them back and forth between us for several minutes before one of my turret's shots crippled its leg. From there we managed to put it down with another shot. As for the other one, well…

BRICK: It tried to eat my hand off, and I didn't like that. So I pulled its tongue out of its mouth.

LILITH: Gross.

BRICK: But effective. And amusing.

LILITH: Still gross.

ROLAND: Once we were safe, we were able to plunder the place, netting Lilith a pretty good fire pistol, and some half decent shotguns and assault rifles, plus some crap to sell for parts or ammo. With Nine Toes dead, that meant that Fryestone was safe from immediate attack, leaving us room to investigate the rest of Skag Gully for our other tasks. Not long after we found another echo device next to a party of dead bandits, who had clearly been ambushed by skags, but I needed more data to complete the decryption. Getting the last piece took a few hours of shooting and hacking our way through endless packs of skags until we reached the other side of the gully.

LILITH: I guess the place really earned its name, huh?

MORDECAI: I nearly ran out of bullets. Out of _sniper rifle_ bullets. That never happens. But it was so, so worth it.

BRICK: I killed things. Lots of things. Dangerous things. That makes me happy.

ROLAND: Not far from where we found the last echo device I needed we found Scar, the skag T. K. sent us to kill. Now he was a tough one, remarkably fast despite missing a leg, but with a bit of excessive fire from Lilith's new pistol, he went down without a hassle.

MORDECAI: And he was guarding a super sweet sniper rifle! Oh it's so good! Who would have thought a purple quality weapon would be found out here?

LILITH: I'm sure there's an interesting story behind that one.

ROLAND: With Scar dead, we started looking for the seeds T. K. needs for his farm, and we found them in some cave systems that, surprise, had more skags in them. Including some really tough ones that had armored hides that were nearly immune to bullets at the front. Lilith had to burn those ones down to kill them. And then there was that one super skag…

MORDECAI: The locals call them Badasses, which I totally respect.

ROLAND: When that thing and an armored skag came at us at once, I thought we were doomed. But Lilith managed to phasewalk explode the armored one off its feet so my turret could riddle its underside with bullets. Mordecai shot out the badass' leg and Brick rushed in and… what did you do exactly Brick?

BRICK: [hearty laugh] I took a grenade and shoved it in the thing's mouth. It blew up real nice after that.

ROLAND: Well that explains that. Anyway, after those two, nothing else in the caves were nearly as dangerous, and we even found a long forgotten weapon cache near the end of the cave, where I found a half decent Vladoff rifle. Once all that was done we made our way back out to the entrance and headed back to Fryestone after checking in with T. K., who was so happy with what we did for him he gave me a special shotgun he apparently designed. Never would have pegged him for a weapon engineer, but appearances can be deceiving.

LILITH: It fires in _waves_. You can't tell me that's not cool.

ROLAND: It is pretty neat. No idea how effective it will be though. I suppose I'll have to test it out. After meeting Baha, we went back to Fryestone and reported in to Zed about the information we found about Sledge's operations in the area. Turns out Nine Toes wasn't the only lieutenant he had in the area. The other is just up the road a ways, goes by the name of… Bone Head. Ugh.

MORDECAI: When he's working for a guy called Sledge, that's actually not unexpected.

ROLAND: According to Zed these guys are the ones that sabotaged the Fryestone car station. We actually got a message from the person who runs the stations, Scooter, asking us to fix them up for him. He's… he's definitely a local.

[clip plays]

SCOOTER: Catch-A-Riiiiiide!

LILITH: What? I thought it was funny.

ROLAND: Either way, we'll go and deal with Bone Head and his group tomorrow. Signing off.


	3. Arid Badlands

Arid Badlands

ROLAND: Roland's log, Day 17 on Pandora. Today was busy but fruitful. We started by heading down the road to deal with Bone Head and his group, which was an… interesting experience.

LILITH: Dude was wearing a skag skull on his head! These bandits are all crazy!

ROLAND: After a brief but fierce firefight we cleared them out and found the component they stole from the car station. I was able to fix it up just by strapping it back into place. Once that was done, Zed asked us to go and open the road from Fryestone out to the rest of the Badlands, as it had been blocked off by Bone Head's group some time ago. The only way to get around the gate was to use a ramp to jump over the gully separating the two areas. When we did, somehow Scooter was aware of it, and…

[clip plays]

SCOOTER: Ah hell, did you just leap over Piss Wash Gully in Runners? Man! Dude, tell when you're gonna do that crap. That was awesome!

LILITH: How did he even know we did it?

MORDECAI: My guess is he has some sort of telemetry system in his cars that notices where they're going.

ROLAND: From there we were able to move around to the gated area and clear out the bandits securing it. Brick wanted to run down the gate with the runner, but I managed to find the mechanism holding it closed and hack it open.

BRICK: Would have been epic and you know it.

ROLAND: Brick, the runners may be infinite, but we're not. And no, the New-U System doesn't count. Anyway, Zed had us meet with a guy living alone on the other side of the gate, a man named Shep Sanders, who is the overseer for the settlements around the Arid Badlands. He wanted our help in undoing the damage the bandits have been causing to the Badlands, though the first task he gave us was in clearing out a few packs of rak that were bothering the area.

MORDECAI: Hives, not packs.

BRICK: I hate rak. They're too flimsy. They blow up if you so much as shoot at them. Boring to kill.

ROLAND: The next task was restarting the wind turbines the bandits had shut down. They were camped out all across the open field the turbines were in, so clearing them all out took some time.

MORDECAI: Wide open spaces, long sight lines. Oh man, it was fun.

LILITH: For you maybe. I had to phasewalk just to get into shooting range of most of them.

BRICK: Rockets don't care about range. Rockets don't care about accuracy. Rockets only go boom. And I like the boom.

ROLAND: After all the bandits were dead we headed to the control room, which is where Shep said the keys to Sledge's Mine were. Turns out they weren't there though, only a note taunting us with poor writing and childish language.

LILITH: You'd think the guy leading a whole area's worth of bandits would be… at least of average intelligence.

MORDECAI: You're overestimating the bandits. By a lot.

ROLAND: Turns out the keys were being kept safe at Sledge's Safehouse up in the hills. We immediately went to go get them, after a quick stop back at Fryestone to restock and pick up a few more tasks.

LILITH: Did we need to do all of those?

MORDECAI: No, but they were offering money and loot.

BRICK: We ALWAYS take money and loot, no matter where it comes from. Rule one of being a badass merc.

LILITH: Most of them just seemed kinda… extra. Though those logs that Patricia Tannis sent us after were at least interesting.

ROLAND: Oh yeah, forgot about her. Patricia Tannis is - supposedly - an Eridian expert who knows how to find and access the Vault. It was on her advice we came to the Badlands to begin with, as she claims that Sledge has an important piece of some 'key' we need to get to the Vault. Now, she does seem to know what she's talking about when it comes to Eridian stuff, but…

MORDECAI: She's totally loco?

ROLAND: Yeah, that. She was muttering about her chairs two timing her or something in between bragging about her genius in figuring out the Vault's secrets. So I take everything she says with a pound of salt. Even if Sledge doesn't have anything to do with the Vault, though, I'll be happy to take him down, since he's obviously a threat to innocent people and needs to die anyway.

MORDECAI: Amen, hermano.

BRICK: Only thing more badass than killing things is killing bad people to protect good people.

LILITH: Yay for doing the right thing through killing people!

ROLAND: Anyway, we went through the hills, killing skags and bandits along the way, taking a pause to go hunting a couple of elemental badass alpha skags that had gathered a reputation as being really dangerous to the locals.

MORDECAI: Whoo, now that was a hunt. Those guys were fast, powerful, armored, and their elements were nasty.

ROLAND: That fight turned into a running gun battle of us kiting them through the hills whittling them down with grenades and rockets while killing every other skag in the hills drawn out by the fighting. It was tough, stressful, and surprisingly fun actually. In the end though, we did bring them down, and they dropped some surprisingly good weapons. Oh, I forgot to mention, skags have a habit of eating metal things along with biological stuff. Do you know why that is, Mordi?

MORDECAI: I think I heard someone say that they leech minerals off the metal so they can stay healthy. No idea how they don't have their stomach punctured when they swallow something as big as a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher though…

ROLAND: I'm not complaining, because this S&S is pretty great actually. Anyway, we continued on to the safehouse, stopping at a bandit camp to gather pieces for a sniper rifle that was broken up there for… some reason.

MORDECAI: It wasn't even that good when we repaired it. Why did someone go through all that trouble for a crappy green rifle anyway?

ROLAND: The safehouse was mostly what you'd expect: lots of bandits in close quarters, a few weapon caches with decent gear, and so on. There was a damaged claptrap there who begged us to repair him, which I went and did while everyone else kept killing bandits, so I got first pick of the weapons cache he unlocked for me.

MORDECAI: Not cool man.

ROLAND: Hey, he who helps is helped in return. Besides, I shared that revolver I found with you, so relax. When we got to the end of the place we met with… a thing. A really big, angry thing.

LILITH: I didn't know a human could get that big. Like, what even happened there? A bruiser mutation combining with latent gigantism? A _super_ bruiser mutation?

MORDECAI: That thing took a shot to the eye and KEPT COMING AT US! I don't think it should count as human anymore!

ROLAND: Right, well, it started rushing us as soon as we got into the arena, along with a whole bunch of midgets swarming us at the same time. We cleared out the midgets first so they wouldn't cut out our ankles while we ran from the big guy and Brick… Brick, do I even want to ask what you did to that thing?

BRICK: [menacing chuckling] He thought he was stronger than me. He thought wrong.

[awkward silence]

LILITH: I don't think I've ever seen arms bend that way. Or legs…

ROLAND: Anyway, after we killed the giant we were able to collect the keys, which had some severed thumbs on the ring for god knows what reason, and we started to head back to Fryestone. On the way back we got a message from… [voice darkens] From _Commandant_ Steele.

MORDECAI: Strong feelings there, bud?

ROLAND: That's putting it lightly. I'll play the message, just so we can hear how much of a bitch she is.

[voice clip plays]

STEELE: It has come to our attention that you've been at war with elements of the local population, and you've now been contracted to assassinate one of their leaders. This type of unsanctioned mercenary activity undermines the stability of the region. You have been warned! These continued insurgent activities will not be tolerated. Abandon this futile pursuit and turn yourself in. While you still can.

MORDECAI: Oh yeah, she's a bitch.

LILITH: A lying one! Those 'locals' she's talking about are _bandits_, you know, the guys who are killing innocent people and taking everything they have! How can she be so blind?

ROLAND: She's not being blind, and she's not dumb. It's intentional. Atlas owns this planet, despite their seeming lack of interest in running it, but it's all part of the plan. They _want_ Pandora to be a lawless, dangerous hell hole so nasty no sane person would come here. It's how they protect their access to Eridian artifacts. If they landed an army here that would be inviting military conflict that they would win, but would cost them dearly. But if they make the planet itself nearly unlivable, then nobody will want to risk coming here for any reason. The bandits are a part of that plan, thus anyone who goes around trying to clear them out is seen as a threat to Atlas' control of Pandora.

LILITH: Oh… That's… that's evil.

ROLAND: It's pragmatic, but yes, it's also evil. And that's why I left them to begin with. That, and seeing what kind of fucked up shit Steele was willing to do to serve Atlas. I should have known she'd find me here.

MORDECAI: Hey, no worries man. We can take her. If she comes after us, we'll just take them all down, the whole company if we need to!

ROLAND: I appreciate the sentiment, but I hope you realize Atlas has one of the largest armies of any of the Megacorps, and they have very advanced technology at their disposal. If they came at us in force, we wouldn't stand a chance.

BRICK: The answer is simple then: we need to become bigger badasses. So badass that even armies can't stand against us.

MORDECAI: And the best way to do that is find the Vault and take all it's awesome loot.

LILITH: And if we can help some people along the way, so much the better right?

ROLAND: … You're right. Just because she's here is no excuse to stop what we're doing. If she wants us to stop, she's going to have to make us.

MORDECAI: Damn right!

ROLAND: Thanks guys. Alright, well, let's end this here. Tomorrow we're going after Sledge himself and getting that artifact. Here we come Sledge.


	4. Headstone Mine

Headstone Mine

ROLAND: Okay, so yesterday I said that we'd be going after Sledge immediately, but there was one more thing we had to do before going after him. We had a mission to collect a bunch of shock crystals from a mining cave in return for a set of Eridian artifacts which would power up our various abilities. I thought that these would be an important advantage to have over Sledge, so we went after them. That proved to be a frustrating endeavour.

LILITH: I have never seen so many badass animals in one place before. There were, like, 10 alpha skags in that last part of the cave! And those craw worms are just… [shivers].

MORDECAI: It was a challenge, to be sure, but that just made the loot all the more satisfying.

ROLAND: It took a few hours to fight our way through the cave, both through the bandits and the various animals, along with a short pause to fix up another damaged claptrap, and by the end of it we had some nice gear and the ability to add shock to our action skills. Though… I'm not sure how it is that Mordecai's bird can channel shock damage…

MORDECAI: She has implants in her claws that let them expel certain kinds of energy.

LILITH: What about you, Brick? How do you use the shock power?

BRICK: [hands channel electricity] I punch things and they explode with lightning.

ROLAND: Doesn't that hurt?

BRICK: Hurts them a hell of a lot more.

ROLAND: I don't know why I expected any other answer. Anyway, after that we went to the mine to kill Sledge, with the added task of blowing up the working components of the mine so that the bandits' source of income will dry up. There's not much to say about the fight through the mine really. It was just an endless onslaught of bandits across the whole place. The only notable thing was the wide open space under the pump tubes where they'd set up a minigun turret, but there was more than enough cover for us to deal with it.

BRICK: Still annoyed yah blew it up.

LILITH: Brick, not even you could be carrying that thing around.

BRICK: So you think.

ROLAND: We eventually reached Sledge's room, and he was a really, really tough fight. He's even more tanky to bullets than Brick is. His shotgun, despite being the most inaccurate thing I've seen in my life, hits insanely hard, and his, well, sledge is like an anvil welded to a shaft. Taking him down took all of our combined effort, but we managed it. Then we opened his personal chest and found the artifact we were looking for. It's… well, it's Eridian, that's as much as I can tell. Soon after that though… that's when we got another call…

LILITH: Don't bother with the voice clip, we all know what she said. As if we'd just hand over this thing because she told us too.

ROLAND: Of course we wouldn't, but the fact that she knows we have it now is worrying. Because if I know her, that means she's going to start making some moves to secure anything else we find. We're going to meet her eventually.

BRICK: And when we do, we'll kick her ass.

ROLAND: [chuckles] Here's hoping. Okay, signing off for today. Tomorrow we'll finish with the Arid Badlands and move on towards New Haven to find our new lead.


	5. Dahl Headlands

Dahl Headlands

[driving noises in the background]

ROLAND: Roland's log, Day 18. Today was another very busy day, but we got a lot of things done and did some real good. We got an early start so we could finish cleaning up the last issues with bandits left in the Arid Badlands. We investigated a dead man and his con scheme, killed bandits who were hanging skulls around their camp, cleaned the wind turbines of rak poop by shooting it off, and gathered together the parts of a surprisingly decent combat rifle. Once that was done we bid farewell to Zed and moved on to the Dahl Headlands. And, surprise surprise, they needed our help.

LILITH: Is there anywhere on this planet that isn't overrun by bandits and creatures?

MORDECAI: Sanctuary is mostly pretty safe, as long as you stay out of the bullymong territory. Round here though… not really, no.

LILITH: Wonderful.

ROLAND: The Dahl Headlands are rather different from the Arid Badlands, in that instead of lots of hilly drifts and mountainous raveens, the Headlands is mostly open ground. That means that vehicles are essential out here. And of course that means that bandit runner patrols are everywhere. In fact, after we secured a base of operations, run by a guy called Lucky, he sent us to clear them out, which Scooter wasn't happy about.

LILITH: I mean, I get why he's upset, but better to have those things as burned out husks than let the bandits keep them.

ROLAND: We were also sent to reactivate the echo-transportation network for this section of the planet, which had been turned off by the bandits of course. That wasn't too hard, just had to throw on some breakers in the power lines and then restart the console. After that there were a lot of miscellaneous tasks we were asked to do while we were here, mostly stuff dealing with the bandits or local animals, but also a few more interesting tasks. One was a hunt for a truly _colossal_ skag that somehow developed a beam attack.

MORDECAI: That thing was AWESOME. Scary as hell, but awesome all the same. Plus the loot it dropped was nuts!

ROLAND: Next we had to clear out a race track of an infestation of scythids. Scythids aren't anything special really, just really big bugs that move abnormally fast. A few of them have evolved elemental traits, but they're not nearly as dangerous as elemental skags.

BRICK: I like punching them. They break good.

ROLAND: The most interesting mission though was a mission to go into an Eridian dig site looking for another elemental artifact. What we found in the dig site was more than just artifacts though. We found some kind of alien protectors guarding the site and had to kill them when they attacked us.

LILITH: I don't know about you guys, but when I was in there, I felt some kind of… pulsing, a sense of energy I've never felt before.

MORDECAI: Think it has to do with you being a siren?

LILITH: Probably, but I don't know what exactly.

ROLAND: Anyway, the fight against them was rough, because they were incredibly fast and had very powerful shields. The only plus was that they didn't have any ranged weapons, so as long as we kept them away we were mostly safe.

MORDECAI: Trying to line up a shot on them was a pain. I'm working on a tech mod that should make dealing with them in the future much easier. I'll get back to you on it when it's done.

ROLAND: Once we completed all of the various tasks we were sent after Mad Mel, the bandit lord who was controlling all of the bandit patrols in the Headlands. His vehicle was much bigger and better armored than the bandit runners, but with the high quality gear we got from the Eridian guardian things, we were able to melt away his armor and then blow him to kingdom come.

BRICK: Glorious boom solves all problems.

ROLAND: Now we're driving towards the edge of the Headlands, heading for New Haven. We would take the transport system, but apparently New Haven had to shut that down to protect themselves from bandits warping into the town, so we'll have to register ourselves with the identification system there before we can use it. That's all for now, signing off.


	6. New Haven

New Haven

ROLAND: Roland's log. Day 19 on Pandora. New Haven is… well, it's no Sanctuary, I'll say that much. Still, it has electricity, walls, and an actual population of people, so it's much better than any of the surrounding areas. When we first arrived we met with the leader of the town, Helena Pierce, a strict but mostly fair woman who has enough scars that it's obvious she's serious about everything. She asked us to check up on the town's various generators, which I did while the others explored the town.

LILITH: There were a surprising number of abandoned weapon chests just hanging out in hidden spots around the town. Nothing good in any of them, but hey, money is money.

MORDECAI: Plenty of missions to find too, stuff for us to do in the local area.

BRICK: I fixed a claptrap.

[silence]

BRICK: What? I could, so I did. What's the issue?

MORDECAI: You know what, you do you Brick.

ROLAND: After helping out the town we went to clear out some of the bandits in the nearby area, as well as heading into the Tetanus Warren to find a local… midget lord and harvest the corrosive crystals in there.

BRICK: I called dibs on the shield. It's a neat shield.

ROLAND: We have corrosive powers now, from completing that quest. From what I know that will help against armored skags and spiderants, and if we meet any Crimson Lance it'll melt through their armor very well. I should know…

MORDECAI: It was an accident, man! Blood didn't mean to scrape your armor, she was just thrown off by that grenade explosion!

ROLAND: Yes, yes, I get it. Anyway, after that we were asked by Scooter to go back to Fryestone to check on things after we left. Zed was still there, and we actually got to see some of the other people there, though they fled back inside the moment they saw us. Then we went to check on T. K…

LILITH: [sniffling] He… he didn't deserve what he got.

MORDECAI: Killing bandits never felt more satisfying.

ROLAND: We took the time to go out to the Skag Gully and buried him next to his wife. At least they'll be together again in the world beyond.

LILITH: [more sniffling]

ROLAND: Once we had paid him our respects, we went to an isolated part of the Badlands to slay a monstrously large rak that went by the name of Mothrak. It was absolutely huge, and spat giant fireballs, but with our combined firepower we took it down fairly quickly.

BRICK: The loot went flying everywhere. Had to run across half the Badlands to get it all.

ROLAND: We bade farewell to Zed one last time and warped back to New Haven. Tomorrow we'll head out into the Rust Commons to meet with Tannis for the first time. Hopefully she'll be able to tell us more about the Vault and how to find it. Signing out.


	7. Rust Commons: West

Rust Commons: West

ROLAND: So… today was busy. And informative. And… a bit embarrassing in a few ways.

LILITH: I learned that burning shit doesn't make the stink go away, so there's that.

ROLAND: Right, yeah, that. Anyway, we headed out into the Rust Commons today to meet with Tannis. She's hidden deep within an Eridian dig site that is utterly abandoned save for her and some local rak and spiderants. We handed over the artifact we found, which she told us was one of four parts for a key that would open the Vault. Apparently the opening only happens once every 200 years, and we're close to opening time. Lucky us.

MORDECAI: If I believed in fate, I'd say it was… but I don't, so I won't.

ROLAND: While we were there she also asked us to pick up more of her echo recordings from where she'd put them around the Commons. By this point in the recordings it was very clear she'd lost her mind, but she's just sane enough to know Eridian tech backwards and forwards, so I really don't much care anymore.

LILITH: How does one date their echo recorder anyway…

ROLAND: Aside from that we had a few other missions to do here. Bandits had blocked up the sewer system leading out of New Haven, so we removed the blockage. And the bandits.

BRICK: Lilith, you know I didn't mean to splash you with the shit, right?

LILITH: Yes, but I still blame you for me smelling like a skag pile for the whole day.

BRICK: That's fair.

ROLAND: We also gathered up parts for an smg that Lilith thought was garbage and collected spare car parts for Scooter. We also… nearly started a war between the bandits and New Haven.

MORDECAI: I told you guys we should be careful taking jobs from Marcus, but did you listen to me? Nooooo!

ROLAND: Marcus wanted us to find out who was supplying the bandits with weapons and eliminate their stockpiles so that we could make them less of a threat. As it turns out, the bandits _really didn't like that_, and threatened to attack New Haven in retaliation. Helena chewed us out over it.

BRICK: She reminds me of my mom. She yells just as loud.

LILITH: I mean, she wasn't wrong. We did kinda screw things up for them there.

ROLAND: Thankfully the solution was pretty simple. Kill more bandits, take out the local bandit lord. A madman named One Eyed Jack. He had a unique explosive revolver that Brick took off him after we… accidentally ran him over with the runner when we burst into his camp.

MORDECAI: Really wish the runners had windshields so I didn't get his blood splattered all over my mask.

ROLAND: It is what it is. Anyway, with him dead, the bandits in the area are now leaderless and without most of their weapons, so they aren't a threat anymore. With them dealt with we went to go follow Tannis' next lead on an artifact. Apparently she gave a man named Crazy Earl the artifact once after they… had a meeting.

LILITH: She also gave him all her underwear. I don't even… just _why_, you know?

ROLAND: With Tannis, I doubt there is a why. Tomorrow we'll go to deal with Crazy Earl and get the next artifact. Signing off.


	8. Crazy Earl's Scrapyard-Treachers Landing

Crazy Earl's Scrapyard/Treacher's Landing

ROLAND: Crazy Earl is weird.

LILITH: You know, with all the insane bandits on Pandora you'd think they'd be the weird ones, but the not murdery people are somehow even stranger.

ROLAND: Right, so, Crazy Earl lives in a scrapyard not far from the edge of the Rust Commons, claims that he owns the place, which I am not sure to doubt or not, given how lawless Pandora is. He had built a barricade to lock people out of going to his house from the main entrance, but he forgot to remove the plasma torch and propane tank that he used to weld the gate shut. Brick took one look at that and…

BRICK: BOOOOOOM BAAABYYY!

ROLAND: Yeah, that barricade was charcoal when we went through it. We talked with Earl, or rather, we talked _at_ Earl while he ignored us until he demanded we get rid of the bandits and spiderants on his land in the scrapyard.

MORDECAI: He failed to mention the skags though.

ROLAND: We took some time to clear out the yard, fixing up a damaged claptrap along the way, and when we were done with that he sent us to go blow up a bandit refinery… thing. I'll admit, I wasn't paying much attention anymore. I know the drill by now.

LILITH: That being?

ROLAND: Talk to person, get told to kill bandits, animals, and blow up something they don't want there anymore. Or collect x amount of a thing.

MORDECAI: Hey, there's not much to do around here, man. Shit gets old because it's the only shit to play with.

ROLAND: I know, I know. Either way, we did that, and Crazy Earl deigned to talk with us, only to demand we go steal booze for him from bandits at Treacher's Landing, kinda proving my point.

LILITH: Well hey, we got to go to the beach guys! The trash riddled, brackish watery beach… It was… great.

MORDECAI: Did you see some of the fish swimming out there? Oh man, when we have some spare time we should go grenade fishing.

LILITH: Grenade fishing?

MORDECAI: It's exactly what it sounds like.

BRICK: It's the only way to fish.

ROLAND: It didn't take long to kill the bandits and clear out their freezer chests. Only problem was when we returned to Earl, he told us he lied about having the Vault key piece. Apparently it had been stolen from him by a bandit lord named Krom, which was why he had barricaded up his home to begin with.

LILITH: What I don't get is why these guys want the artifacts to begin with.

MORDECAI: Probably to sell on the interplanetary black market, assuming anyone ever comes here looking for stuff to buy.

ROLAND: Krom is hiding in his canyon on the other side of the Rust Commons, called the Middle of Nowhere locally. Though… I don't think anyone lives there _to_ call it that, so…

MORDECAI: A person living there is enough to be a settlement on Pandora Roland.

ROLAND: [sighs] Either way we met up with Helena Pierce first to tell her we were leaving, and she told us that the Middle of Nowhere has been having problems with its bounty board that we ought to fix up, which of course we want to do so we can get more missions out there. We also have to locate a missing person from New Haven who seems to have gotten mixed up with the bandits serving Krom. Hopefully we can talk some sense into him when we meet him.

LILITH: I kinda doubt it? I mean, that body we found was pretty carved up…

ROLAND: Hope may be foolish, but we shouldn't not have it, Lilith. Anyway, signing out.


	9. Rust Commons: East-Krom's Canyon

Rust Commons: East/Krom's Canyon

ROLAND: Roland's log, Day 22 on Pandora. Today we arrived in the eastern section of the Rust Commons, and it was just as empty as the rest of the Commons was. I was expecting it but somehow it still disappointed me.

LILITH: There's a lot of disappointments on Pandora.

ROLAND: We arrived at the bounty board, which was just kinda sitting in the middle of nowhere, hence the name I suppose, with only one house nearby. That house belonged to Mr. Johns, who runs the board and is the sole inhabitant of Nowhere. He asked us to check out the board and see why it was on the fritz, and I figured out it was because… it lacked fuses. Fuses. In this day and age.

MORDECAI: Hey, when you live this far out from any trading station, you have to go analog man.

ROLAND: There's analog and then there's literally pre-space age tech, Mordy. Anyway, Johns told us he thought some scythids went and stole the fuses, so he sent us to a known scythid nest to search for them. We had to search the refuse piles for them, because of course the scythids had tried to eat them, then returned and fixed the board up.

LILITH: You fixed the board. We had to go deal with some spiderants because Johns thought they were annoying.

MORDECAI: I mean they are, so…

ROLAND: Once the board was fixed, we got another call from Tannis to collect the last of her echo recorders, which we gathered while going around destroying some holy books for a local cult of some kind. I don't want to think of what the bandits out here think is worth worshiping.

BRICK: I have seen a group of inbreds on Perseia 15 worship their own poop.

[silence]

LILITH: Why did we need to know that?

BRICK: I felt like sharing.

ROLAND: We collected the logs and burned the books. I… I'll admit, I didn't listen to the logs themselves, just grabbed them. It's… depressing to listen to them at this point.

LILITH: It is kinda sad, yeah. Hearing her go insane like that. I feel kinda bad for her.

MORDECAI: Think there's anything we can do to help her out?

ROLAND: For now I think trying to finish her quest to find the Vault is the best therapy we can offer. Speaking of which, after we turned in those missions we broke through the defenses Krom's goons had set up and went to his canyon to collect the next Vault piece. While we were there we stole some of the bandit's canned skag meat, which… why even bother doing that? There's always more skags to kill when you want fresh meat.

MORDECAI: It's easier to transport that way. Plus not everyone has a fridge they can store meat in when they're not hungry right that second.

ROLAND: Fair enough. We fixed yet another claptrap while collecting the food, and then we ran into the missing person from New Haven. He'd renamed himself Reaver and immediately tried to kill us when we saw him. Lilith and I tried to reason with him but… he wasn't listening.

BRICK: So I punched off his head.

ROLAND: Yes, yes you did. The family wasn't all that happy when we told them about it later, though they did still pay us.

MORDECAI: And I kept his sniper. It's kinda alright, needs a few tweaks to its accuracy though.

ROLAND: After that we went to the other half of the canyon to confront Krom himself. He had set himself up at the end of an open raveen with a turret looking over the whole place. It was a slog trying to fight through the bandits while he was peppering us with fire the whole time. But eventually Lilith got close enough to phasewalk through the fire and rip him out of his seat. After that he went down easy.

LILITH: You know, for how blinged out his pistol is it's really not all that great. Might just sell it back in New Haven to be honest.

ROLAND: We're spending the night with Johns in his house. Tomorrow we're going to go deal with Jaynistown, a whole settlement full of bandits who are blocking access to the Trash Coast, where Tannis says the next piece of the Vault Key is hidden. And, more than likely, we'll have a bunch of other missions to do while we're out there.

MORDECAI: More missions more loot!

ROLAND: True enough. Signing out.


	10. Rust Commons: East-Jaynistown

Rust Commons: East/Jaynistown

ROLAND: And I thought yesterday was disappointing. Somehow today was even worse.

LILITH: Which part?

ROLAND: I suppose I should clarify. Right, well, today we assaulted Jaynistown and took out their leader, Jaynis. It wasn't as hard as I was expecting. For a supposed bandit town there were surprisingly few of them there, and Jaynis himself wasn't all that impressive, nor was his rifle.

MORDECAI: We got better loot from those spiderants we killed.

ROLAND: Yes, we did. That was one of our other missions, to take samples from spiderant spawn holes and kill the unique specimens which came out. We also turned on some beacons, fixed some plumbing to help out a local gardener, and… dealt with that cult again.

LILITH: Oh boy, here we go.

ROLAND: Right, so first we went to gather some pamphlets from a segment of the cult. By killing them, obviously. Once we gathered those we learned they were worshiping an animal of 'great power' called Slither. We were sent out to deal with it a-

MORDECAI: It was a fucking scythid man! A tiny, stupid little scythid! All that build up and for what? A joke that wasn't even funny!

BRICK: I blew it up with one punch. That's not as awesome as I would have liked it to be.

ROLAND: Yes, that was very disappointing, but not quite as disappointing as the next thing was. Once we'd taken out Jaynis we returned to his brother, Taylor, who had sent us to kill his brother in the first place. He said he had a reward for us back in New Haven, which we went to get and…

LILITH: He had some of his goons try to kill us.

MORDECAI: And it was insulting too! Like, they sent less than six guys after us! We _just got done_ killing a whole town of bandits, and he thought six guys would do us in? The hell man!

ROLAND: We weren't even all there to deal with them as well. Brick went to do another task for the guy Taylor sent us to. Um… what _did_ he have you do, Brick?

BRICK: You don't need to know.

ROLAND: … Okay then. Anyway, after that we talked with Helena, who was rather upset with our mistake.

LILITH: Yeah, we messed up again.

ROLAND: As it turns out, Taylor was even worse than his brother, since he actually had some pull with the bandits in the Rust Commons. He retook the town, named it after himself, because of course, and he built it up to be an actually dangerous fort. Probably the most dangerous place we've assaulted so far.

MORDECAI: That's… not really saying much, actually. Like, Mad Mike was the most dangerous guy we fought before this, and he was cheating cause he had his big monster truck thing.

ROLAND: True enough. Well, before we went to deal with him, we took care of a couple quests in Treacher's Landing, which included… grenade fishing.

MORDECAI: Told you it was fun.

LILITH: Also we had to blow up some boats so the bandits couldn't try to become pirate bandits.

BRICK: I am the Leviathan. I rise.

ROLAND: Once that was done we assaulted Taylortown. We took out the turrets, cleaned out the bandits, and killed Taylor. It was a difficult fight, particularly when Taylor tried to drown us in rockets with his two bruiser pals and some missile turrets, but we took him down. And Brick got _another_ epic launcher.

BRICK: I am the Leviathan. I am content.

ROLAND: Anyway, now that Taylor is dead and the Rust Commons is finally… mostly safe, we'll be moving on to the Trash Coast tomorrow, after doing the rounds to see if anyone needs us to do anything while we are out there. Signing off.


	11. Trash Coast

Trash Coast

ROLAND: Fuck Chuck Durden.

LILITH: Woah.

MORDECAI: Damn, man, you alright?

ROLAND: No, no I am not. Fuck that guy and his whole bandit clan sitting in his back pocket.

BRICK: I can go back and kill him if you want.

ROLAND: I… No Brick, that won't be necessary. I just… really don't like him. Okay, let me explain. Today we were going to the Trash Coast to get the next Vault piece, but we decided to go ahead and do a quick mission to fight some bandits in an arena, since the rewards seemed good.

LILITH: I mean they were, but…

MORDECAI: Tight quarters, limited cover, LOTS of bandits… it was tough.

BRICK: I was actually challenged. That is rare.

ROLAND: The final wave was almost all badasses, most of them brutes with shotguns, assault rifles, and rockets. It was hell. But we all pulled through, took Chuck's money, and walked away. So yeah, fuck that guy. But once that was done we headed out to the Trash Coast. Surprise, it's full of garbage and it's on the coast.

LILITH: Seems like nobody's imaginative when it comes to names around here.

MORDECAI: They're really not.

ROLAND: Before we went after the Vault key we explored the area and did some missions for the locals. As well as the expected fights against bandits and wildlife. The first mission was to check out a house on a small beach to see if it was liveable. Turns out it had a scythid infestation, with one particular scythid being much tougher than the rest despite leaking blood like a hose every second it flew.

LILITH: That one was kinda disgusting, all things considered. Like, there was blood EVERYWHERE.

MORDECAI: Pretty nasty, yeah. Did drop some good loot though.

ROLAND: From there we made our way around through a spiderant hive to where a super-sized Queen ant lived, killing it and taking its abdomen to a bandit camp and planting it as a lure so more spiderants would come and ruin their days for a while. I mean, we had to kill another powerful spiderant who was attracted to the smell, but it still more or less worked.

LILITH: We also went and saved Crazy Earl's pet skag from bandits. Am I the only one who thought it was a little cute?

MORDECAI: Eh, not really. There are some people here on Pandora who take baby skags as pets. That tends to stop when they grow up though, since they don't stay small and harmless for very long.

ROLAND: When we'd done all of our quests we went the other way down the coast, fighting through some spiderants to get to our goal. Which was a giant, moving wall of flesh called a Rak Hive. And yes, it had Rak living inside of it.

MORDECAI: Suck it Angel, that thing was easy!

LILITH: Mordy, shush!

MORDECAI: What?

ROLAND: I… haven't talked about the Angel yet in these logs.

MORDECAI: Oh… whoops, my bad.

ROLAND: [sighs] It's fine. But yeah, the Angel is a voice that keeps contacting us, telling us more or less where to go and what to shoot. I haven't mentioned her before because, despite her contacting all of us repeatedly, I'm still not sure if she's… real or not.

**Angel**: Oh I am very much real, my friend. And I promise, I mean you no harm.

LILITH: Oh hey, there she is.

ROLAND: Well if you are real, _what_ are you exactly?

**Angel**: I'll explain another time, I assure you. For now, you are well on your way to your goal. I'll contact you again soon.

ROLAND: You always say that. [sighs again] Alright, well, that happened. Anyway, tomorrow we're turning over the piece to Tannis, then figuring out where to go next. Signing off.


	12. Old Haven

Old Haven

ROLAND: They're here. They're making their move.

LILITH: We knew this was coming, Roland. We're ready for them.

ROLAND: I know, but… it's sobering to see them in person again. Anyway, to explain, we went to Old Have today after meeting up with Tannis. She said that a claptrap of hers had been captured there and was being held captive, and he had information on where to find the next piece. We also got a message from Helena that Old Haven had been spewing smoke in obvious distress signals for a few days now and asked us to investigate. When we arrived we immediately found out what happened. The Crimson Lance went in and occupied the town.

MORDECAI: Are they always that destructive when they show up?

ROLAND: Believe it or not this was them showing restraint, since they didn't level the town. But it was clear all the occupants had either fled or were already long dead when we got there. Good news is that apparently the town had already been turned into a bandit settlement sometime in the recent past, so the only people who died were bandits. No real loss there.

LILITH: I hope the actual citizens got to somewhere safe.

MORDECAI: Here's hoping.

ROLAND: We explored the town, killing all the Lance soldiers who got in our way. One of the first things we found was a strongbox that was guarded by bandits. Dead ones. They had a set of keys with them, but they needed several more to open the box, so we kept a look out for more keys as we went through the rest of the town. We also shut down the smoke signals, as it turned out the Lance were using them to lure in curious bandits and slaughter them. Pretty standard M.O. in hostile territory.

LILITH: Man, Lance are ruthless, aren't they?

ROLAND: You have no idea.

MORDECAI: Hey, Roland… did you have any trouble fighting these guys? You know, since they used to be their friends and stuff?

ROLAND: No. Not really. All of the friends I had died long before I left, and it wasn't hard after that to see how cruel and aggressive the rest of the Lance could be. Now, I feel nothing but contempt for them, at least the ones that follow orders unquestioningly. Some of them are still good people, trapped in a bad place. But they won't be the ones in Steele's unit. Only those as messed up as her get shifted to her unit.

BRICK: Just makes their screams of pain all the more beautiful.

ROLAND: True enough. Clearing the town took hours, as we had to fight hard for every foot we advanced. Thankfully we had enough fire and corrosive weapons to make their armor far less effective than it could be. Finally we made it to the back of the place, where they had the claptrap held up in a cage. We had to fight a defensive battle to protect him while we got him out of the cage. Thankfully it seems there was only a reinforced company in the town, as eventually the Lance ran out of bodies to throw at us and the town was secure.

LILITH: That was one of the hardest fights I've ever been in, but damn if it wasn't fun.

MORDECAI: They're a good challenge. Have to aim just right to punch through their helmets.

BRICK: They break good.

ROLAND: The claptrap told us that the final piece of the Vault key was being held by Baron Flynt, the top bandit lord in this part of the planet. He has his base in the primary mining machine left by the Dahl corporation out on the Salt Flats.

LILITH: He's the guy who is blocking the way to Sanctuary, right?

MORDECAI: Yep. He and his brother Captain Flynt have a grudge between each other in trying to take down Sanctuary. They hate each other almost as much as they do innocent people.

ROLAND: Since it's late in the day, we decided to wait for dealing with the Baron until tomorrow. We're getting close, guys. Just one more piece, and we'll finally be able to get to the Vault.

BRICK: Loot loot loot loot loot loot LOOT!

MORDECAI: Hell yeah, man! This is gonna be amazing you guys! Best loot in the galaxy is waiting in there.

LILITH: I'm hoping to find some more information on Sirens somewhere in the Vault. On top of the loot, I mean.

ROLAND: I don't care what we find in the Vault, so long as we keep it far away from Steele. Especially if it means getting rid of her for good. This is Roland and the Vault Hunters, signing off.


	13. Salt Flats-Crimson Fastness

Salt Flats/Crimson Fastness

ROLAND: I knew this time was coming. I didn't expect it to be like this though.

LILITH: I don't think any of us saw this coming.

MORDECAI: Talk about a shocking swerve, yeah.

ROLAND: Okay, to explain what happened, I should go back to the start of the day. We left the Middle of Nowhere so we could go after Baron Flynt here in the Salt Flats. The Baron was more talkative than most of the other lords, calling us over the echo to taunt us.

LILITH: Not very scary taunts, to be honest. I think he was trying too hard to be falsely polite.

ROLAND: We blew up his protective patrols and broke into his fortress, stopping along the way to fix up a claptrap and gather the parts for an assault rifle. You know, the usual stuff. Pretty good rifle, actually, still using it right now. Anyway, we killed our way through the Baron's gang, which included a bunch of psychos, gun guns, and a pair of massive brutes named Hanz and Franz.

BRICK: [grumbles angrily] Didn't expect to see those two jokers here. I thought I taught them better manners than that.

ROLAND: Wait, you knew them?

BRICK: I did. Hopefully this time they learn their lesson.

MORDECAI: Hold up, they have New-U passes? I thought bandits were automatically kicked out of the system.

BRICK: Most are, yeah, but those guys are clever, more than they look. I'll probably see them again. They don't learn lessons too good.

ROLAND: If only that were the only surprise for the day. Anyway, the Baron himself wasn't that dangerous. He had a very powerful shotgun but it was hampered by the slow speed of the rockets it fires.

LILITH: I've been meaning to talk about that actually. Have we seen any of those rocket shotguns that were actually good?

[brief silence]

MORDECAI: Well hell, now that you mention it, I don't think any of them have been useable.

ROLAND: They're a bit too slow with the rocket speed to be viable at any distance but right in the enemy's face, and at that point a regular shotgun would be better.

BRICK: So much potential, wasted. Wasted I say!

ROLAND: Either way, the Baron's gun will sell for a lot. Once he was dead we checked his personal chest but there was nothing there, no key piece. Then Steele calls to gloat about how Tannis betrayed us, there was no fourth key piece, she had won, she was gonna get the Vault and on and on. I forgot how much she refuses to shut the hell up.

MORDECAI: Plus, like, she hasn't even won yet, you know? She didn't even try all that hard to kill us. We took on the whole of Old Haven at once, did she think a few squads of her troops would do us in now? Kinda insulting, honestly.

ROLAND: To give her a tiny, tiny bit of fairness, she was probably using that time to shut down the echo network and block off communications for the planet, as well as secure Sanctuary so that they couldn't interfere with her plan.

LILITH: Still messed up by not dealing with us when she had the chance.

ROLAND: Very true. Once we fought our way past her token kill squad, we took our runners straight at the base of operations for the Crimson Lance for this sector of Pandora, which is right here on the far end of the Salt Flats. Incidentally, this kinda proves my point about Atlas not caring about the bandits, since they had one of the most powerful bandit lords around living right in their front yard and didn't do a thing about him. Anyway, I knew trying to assault the place from the front would never work, but luckily I know that standard procedure with any Lance fortress is to have a secret back entrance that can be used to escape or counter-infiltrate the facility if it has been captured by enemy forces. Finding it was as simple as checking the area for caves that went deep enough into the cliff face.

LILITH: Doesn't it seem a bit weird that there were no guards in the cave itself?

MORDECAI: I mean, that's probably what the spiderants were for. Those things would keep out any regular bandits who go poking around, and they probably didn't expect any actual badasses to want to mess with them in the first place.

ROLAND: When we reached the back door itself, turns out Steele was waiting for us, had her second in command and a couple of Lance Royal Guard take us out personally. [chuckles] They didn't stand a chance.

LILITH: Okay, so, I took a look at that weird Eridian cannon the guy was using, and I gotta say guys… it's pretty crap.

BRICK: Don't call that pathetic skagheap a cannon. It defiles the name.

ROLAND: Once they were dealt with we were able to tear through the Fastness before the Lance could regroup and react. Soon enough we reached Tannis, who had been locked up in their prison cell.

LILITH: Real talk here for a sec… is anyone really mad at Tannis for 'betraying' us?

MORDECAI: Nah, not really.

BRICK: I barely noticed.

ROLAND: In all likelihood Steele forced her into a no-win scenario where the only way Tannis stayed safe was by playing along.

LILITH: Oh… well great. Glad I'm not the only one.

ROLAND: Tannis told us that Steele had taken the key from her and was heading to the Eridian Promontory, which is where the Vault is supposedly located. But before we could go after her we needed to restart the echo network, which required us going out to three network nodes out in the edges of the Fastness. When we went to do that we saw that we weren't the only ones who were attacking the Lance.

LILITH: Those freaky alien Guardian things were tearing them up! It was really cool but also kinda scary. Or at least it was until Mordecai shot them straight through their shields.

MORDECAI: Ha! I told you it was gonna hurt them good. I'm telling yah, they don't stand a chance against my Trespass tech.

ROLAND: Unfortunately the rest of us can't share his program, but a mix of strong shock damage and solid bullet hits is enough to take them down as well. We fought through a mix of guardians and Lance to each of the individual nodes and turned them on before heading back inside to finish the re-start process. Now we're all set to go after Steele and stop her from opening the Vault before we can get it.

[crackling static, followed by a voice coming through]

**Angel**: Can you hear me? Are you there?

LILITH: Angel? What happened to you?

**Angel**: When the echo network went down I lost contact with you, but you brought it back up. Listen, there is no time left, you MUST reach the Vault immediately and stop Steele from opening it! The consequences if you don't are disastrous!

ROLAND: What kind of consequences?

**Angel**: The kind that include all of the human race being at risk!

MORDECAI: Woah woah woah, hold up! We're badasses and all, but we ain't no saviors of humanity! What the heck is going on here!

**Angel**: There's no time for questions! Please, you must hurry and reach the Vault before it's too late!

LILITH: What are we waiting for then? Let's go!

ROLAND: Alright, let's move Hunters. Roland, signing out!


	14. The Vault

The Vault

[sounds of combat in the background]

ROLAND: Roland here! Decided to record this entry live, since, uh… might not have an opportunity later if Angel's warnings turn out to be true. Lilith, Lance behind that rock!

LILITH: On it! [phaseblast] He's toast.

ROLAND: Brick, cover Mordy as he takes on that Arch Guardian!

BRICK: [roaring madly]

MORDECAI: Come on… sit still you pendejo… GOT IT!

[sniper shot, distant screech]

ROLAND: Nice shot! Okay, so, after we cleared out the Crimson Fastness we followed Tannis' directions towards the Vault. Turns out it was pretty easy to find, since the area was crawling with Lance soldiers. [burst of rifle fire]

BRICK: Moooooore! Bring me bloooooood!

ROLAND: The Lance weren't ready for us to attack so quickly, so we cut through their rear guard in no time. From there we started following the path towards the Vault, running into more Lance and Guardians fighting each other on the way. We've been fighting our way through both groups for almost an hour now.

LILITH: Mordy, behind you!

MORDECAI: Get 'em Blood!

[bird screech, death scream]

ROLAND: Resistance is getting tougher, so I think we're almost to the Vault.

**Angel**: Please, you must hurry, there is no time left! Steele is already there!

LILITH: What's stopping her then?

ROLAND: Us! She wants us to be there so she can gloat!

**Angel**: I hope you're right. Because if you aren't there to stop what comes out, nothing will matter!

MORDECAI: Okay, I think we're clear! Blood doesn't see anything still alive.

BRICK: This… was the best two hours of my life. And it's not over yet.

LILITH: Bit low on rounds, but I think we're as ready as we can be.

ROLAND: Alright… let's go.

[sounds of a massive door opening, a few minutes of silence]

ROLAND: There she is. Ready to gloat.

MORDECAI: Want me to put a bullet in her before she can start?

ROLAND: Don't bother, she'd just deflect it.

LILITH: Wait, how?

ROLAND: Her siren power lets her deflect attacks for a short time.

LILITH: What! Oh that is bullshit!

BRICK: Like your power isn't any less broken.

LILITH: I… I mean… okay, you've got a point.

STEELE: There you are, Vault Hunters! At last you've arrived, but too late. The contents of the Vault are the rightful property of the Atlas Corporation. But you… you belong to me.

ROLAND: Fuck you, Steele! We've fought through your whole army to get here, and you won't stop us now!

LILITH: We're the ones who got the key, we earned the Vault!

MORDECAI: Hand it over now and we might let you leave.

BRICK: [uproarious laughter] I won't!

STEELE: Silence! I don't have time to waste on you any longer.

[siren energy whines, loud rumbling and crashing]

ROLAND: Holy crap…

STEELE: Yes! The key works! Captain, get your team ready to go inside. Leave the Vault Hunters to me.

LILITH: OH SHIT! LOOK BEHIND YOU!

STEELE: Do you think I'm so dumb as to fall fo- AAAAAAAAAH!

[unholy screams, smashing and shooting from the Lance]

MORDECAI: QUE MIERDA!

ROLAND: What in the hell is that thing!

**Angel**: It's called the Destroyer! The Eridians locked it away in the Vault to protect the universe from its hunger!

BRICK: We're fighting an abomination from beyond space and time? Badass.

**Angel**: In its home realm is it untouchable, but in order to exist in this dimension it needs to take on a physical form! You must kill it now while it is vulnerable, before it can adjust and strengthen itself beyond our ability to harm!

LILITH: And just how the hell do we kill something like this!

**Angel**: The same way you kill everything else on Pandora! Shoot it in the weak points!

ROLAND: Let me guess! Eyes, mouth, and those glowing purple things on its tentacles.

**Angel**: Yes, those! Now hurry up and shoot it!

ROLAND: Alright guys! This is it, our big moment! Now, group up, and shoot it til it dies!

BRICK, LILITH, MORDECAI: Yes sir!

[long minutes of combat, explosions, and Brick's screaming]

ROLAND: It's almost dead, just needs one more hit!

BRICK: I know just what to do! Lilith, blow me up!

LILITH: _What?!_

BRICK: Send me into the air, I got this!

LILITH: I hope your idea is crazy enough to work, Brick! [phasewalk detonation]

BRICK: WOOOOOOOOO! MORDY, GIVE ME BLOOD!

MORDECAI: Help him out Bloodwing!

[bird cry]

BRICK: Alright Blood! Let's make the world explode!

[long bird cry mixing with Brick's yells, massive explosion]

ROLAND: Holy hell! You blew its face apart!

BRICK: Fuck yeah I did! Most Badass Thing Ever!

**Angel**: You did it! You killed the Destroyer! Oh thank goodness. You did so well, thank you.

MORDECAI: Hell yeah we did! Alright, now that that thing is dead, let's loot the place!

**Angel**: Um, about that…

ROLAND: What?

**Angel**: The only thing in the Vault was the Destroyer. There's no loot inside it. Sorry.

[long silence]

BRICK: Oh you gotta be shitting me.

MORDECAI: You mean to tell me we spent all that time on this planet for nothing!

**Angel**: Not for nothing! You did save the universe from a massive threat!

MORDECAI: But we're not even gonna get paid for it!

**Angel**: Actually… I think Tannis will give you a handsome reward if you give her the Vault key. Consider it a gift from me for a job well done.

LILITH: How much is handsome?

**Angel**: 100 million dollars. Each.

[short silence]

BRICK: I can live with that.

ROLAND: I'm just happy we killed Steele. The money's just a plus for me. And besides… have to be alive to complain about no loot, right?

MORDECAI: [sighs] Yeah, I guess. Still a letdown though. Let's… let's just go give that stupid key to Tannis.

LILITH: Hey, uh, guys… since we found the Vault and all that… are we going to still stick together?

BRICK: Yeah, of course we are.

MORDECAI: Why would we split up? We're a group of ultimate badasses now. And friends too.

ROLAND: You all are more my family than my real family ever was. I'd never want to leave if I can help it.

LILITH: Aw, you guys…

ROLAND: Well, now that we've killed Steele and defeated the evil inside the Vault, I guess this is it. Not sure what we'll do next, but I'm sure it will be interesting. Roland's log, signing off.


	15. Jakob's Cove

Jakob's Cove

ROLAND: Why is Pandora so damn weird?

MORDECAI: I have no idea man. Shit's loco.

ROLAND: [long winded sigh] Right, okay. Roland's log, Day 30 on Pandora. It's been a while since we opened the Vault, and since then we've mostly been hanging out at Sanctuary, doing a few missions for the people here waiting for our next big job. That job came from Jakobs, of all companies, contacting us asking we head out to their lumber yard in the Jakobs' Cove swamps to deal with an issue that had… risen up.

LILITH: That one was accidental, wasn't it?

ROLAND: Realized it as I was saying it. Anyway, we warped there and were met by, of course, a claptrap, who told us that the town was currently facing a… [sighs] _Zombie Apocalypse._

BRICK: Never in my life have I needed something so much and not known until I received it.

LILITH: Now look, I was one of those nerds who made zombie survival plans as a kid, thinking about who I'd save and who I'd leave behind and all that, but even then I knew it wasn't supposed to be real. _Why is it real?!_

ROLAND: Because this is Pandora. So we made our way to the primary settlement, fighting our way past a few groups of zombies to get there. The zombies are about what you'd expect; slow, brainless, and very weak to headshots.

MORDECAI: It's not even a challenge man. It's just a chore.

BRICK: They blow up good too. Me likey.

ROLAND: The main unique feature is that they spit acid and are immune to corrosive damage, which makes sense since… they're dead. Fire still works though. Once we made it to the town we had to turn on the automated defense turrets, which made the town safe enough to explore. Unfortunately it seems we arrived too late, as I'm pretty sure nobody was still alive there…

LILITH: It sucks, but it's not our fault. It's Jakobs' for not acting faster in getting help.

ROLAND: True enough. The town's claptrap asked us to go talk to Doctor Ned, who is supposedly Doctor Zed's brother, to ask for his help in dealing with the crisis. Ned wasn't in his townhome but off in his research facility deeper in the swamp, so we had to go after him, after doing a quest to gather bird eggs and collect a video log of a local worker to figure out what happened.

LILITH: [sniffling] Poor guy.

BRICK: Hey, no spoilers!

LILITH: Brick, it's a journal.

BRICK: Spoilers, Lilith. Can't be saying spoilers.

LILITH: I… I mean… oh fine, whatever.

ROLAND: On the way to Ned's place we killed a bunch more zombies and hunted down a weird mutant _thing_ that had a pumpkin for a head. I would ask why, but I know I'm not going to get an answer at this point. Also, we, uh… we found an old friend of ours…

LILITH: T.K.'s back!

MORDECAI: How did he even get here? We buried him in Skag Gully ages ago.

LILITH: Maybe Zed missed him and reburied him here and then the zombie stuff happened and brought him back.

BRICK: Ned ain't Zed though.

LILITH: Oh come on Brick, it's so obvious.

ROLAND: Either way, happy as we were to see him, he… is still a zombie and wanted to eat brains. Lucky for us though he was perfectly fine eating zombie brains instead of living brains. So he asked us to collect zombie brains for him. [pause] I now realize that is the strangest sentence I ever said.

BRICK: Give it time, we'll find stranger.

ROLAND: I kinda doubt it. After fighting our way through more zombies we arrived at Ned's research lab, which he built up at the top of a very large tree. We had to defend ourselves from more hordes of undead as he _very slowly_ lowered his elevator down to us.

MORDECAI: I noticed how fast it came down on its own as we were leaving, that shit was totally on purpose!

LILITH: Well I mean yeah, cause we figured out-

ROLAND: Hold up Lilith, want to handle things in order here.

LILITH: Again, it's a journal, why bother?

ROLAND: What can I say, I'm orderly. Anyway, Ned told us he made the zombies 'by accident' and wanted our help to cure them. He had apparently worked on a cure using skag DNA but he'd left the formula at the Generally Hospital and needed us to collect it. The main way to the hospital was blocked by fallen trees, so we had to go through the secret path along the beach hidden by a tombstone of all things.

LILITH: Is it just me or is this place even more morbid than most of Pandora?

MORDECAI: It definitely is. Like, you ever notice the whole time we were here the sun never came up?

ROLAND: We were only there for one night, Mordy.

MORDECAI: Are you sure about that? It felt longer…

ROLAND: While on the way to the hospital we were asked to check on the logs of the person that the Jakobs company had previously hired to handle the zombies, Father O'Callahan. Turns out he'd had as little trouble with the zombies as we've had, but he ran into a monster at the hospital who put up more of a fight. We found that same monster up at the hospital…

LILITH: I feel so bad. He just wanted to work to get money for his family, then all THIS happened. He didn't deserve any of it.

MORDECAI: We all feel bad for Hank, Lils. We all do.

BRICK: I'm keeping the hat to remember him by. Plus it's a cool hat.

ROLAND: Just don't let it get wet. Hank, by the way, was the man whose recorders we collected earlier in the night. In the last one he said he had tested Ned's cure, but it seems the cure wasn't the best, because it actually turned him into a… _wereskag_. Yes, wereskag. Thankfully he was exceptionally weak to fire, so we burned him down before he could even touch us.

LILITH: Had to be done. Sorry Hank…

BRICK: There, there Lils. [sounds of hugging, bones popping in Lililth's spine]

LILITH: [strained] Thank you Brick...

ROLAND: Anyway, we found the cure sample in a trash bin outside the hospital, because that's sanitary, and were about to head back to town when we got a message asking us to clear out the _other_ wereskags from the beaches around the hospital, because apparently Hank wasn't Ned's only test subject. We went down there and fought several others, including some flocks of rak which had turned into… living skeletons?

MORDECAI: Guess the zombie plague got to them too, in a very strange way.

ROLAND: Either way, the other wereskags were just as vulnerable to cleansing flame and we put them out of their misery. We went back to town, only to find that the townclap who had been helping us was tied up by somebody. That same person had hacked the claptrap with a prerecorded message, telling us to head to Dead Haven to find evidence of the real cause of the plague.

MORDECAI: Never trust a claptrap, guys. Never.

ROLAND: Oh come on, Mordy, most of them are harmless.

MORDECAI: Don't trust them anyway! Right Blood?

[bird caw]

MORDECAI: I am not being paranoid!

ROLAND: We went to Dead Haven by boat from the beach near town, shooting more of the local birds when they tried to peck at us because we're the only safe food they can eat around here.

LILITH: Is that why they were attacking us even though we were shooting at them? Wow… now I feel kinda bad again.

BRICK: They're birds, who cares?

[Indignant squawk]

MORDECAI: Hey!

BRICK: You know what I mean.

ROLAND: When we arrived in Dead Haven it was, surprise, also overrun by zombies. Apparently it was also a Lance outpost of some kind, as we found a few zombified members who could spit out their scorpio turrets… somehow. We made our way through the town, which is disturbingly exactly the same as Old Haven, and found Ned's lab. In the lab we collected some of his echo recordings, which showed that the zombie plague was a whole lot less 'accidental' than he claimed.

MORDECAI: Big freaking surprise there. Man, still can't believe Zed would do this.

BRICK: I'm telling you, Ned ain't Zed Mordy.

MORDECAI: Brick, come on man, the evidence was right there in our faces!

ROLAND: Also it turns out that Ned's assistant, Bill, got killed by the zombies, so Ned tried to resurrect him. It… didn't go as planned.

BRICK: BIG OLD ZOMBIE THING BLOWS UP REAL GOOD, HA HA HA!

LILITH: Why was it able to throw electricity at us?

MORDECAI: I have no idea, who can tell how this stuff works anymore?

ROLAND: Killing the 'Frakenbill' took a while, but eventually we made it dead again. From there we looked for a comm antenna to send the information we found back to Jakobs. Their… [sighs] The quality of their comms tech leaves _something to be desired_.

MORDECAI: I didn't even know what 56k meant until you told me.

ROLAND: Most people don't know, because it's only a trivia point in the _history books_. Thankfully they were able to receive the message after only ten minutes of encryption, and they sent us a transport to get us back to town safely. After _another_ ten minutes of waiting and zombie slaying.

LILITH: Hands up, who here hates bureaucracy?

EVERYONE: Me!

ROLAND: After a tinge of nostalgia getting thrown around in a drop-pod we landed back in town with a new mission: deal with Ned. Jakobs was even paying us well to do so, which was a nice bonus given we were planning on killing him anyway.

LILITH: For Hank.

MORDECAI: For the Father.

BRICK: For loot!

ROLAND: Not that we need the money anyway after the Vault payout, but… what's a little more, right? We went into the lumber yard to get to the saw mill, where Ned was hiding, fighting yet more of his zombies along the way.

MORDECAI: So, uh, how many people lived here in Jakobs Cove anyway? Because it feels like we killed a lot more than a few hundred zombies.

LILITH: I think some of them were coming back from the damage we did to them and attacked us multiple times.

BRICK: Not the ones I blew up. They was nothing but little chunks when I got done with them.

ROLAND: On the way to the mill we collected records from other adventurers that Jakobs hired who all died at some point. None of them seemed like they were nearly badass enough to deal with zombies, so I blame their deaths on Jakobs reaching out to people who were clearly not prepared for what they were facing.

LILITH: I second that! One of the guys we found tried to hide in a _barrel_. Like seriously, who thinks that would keep them safe from zombies?

ROLAND: We fought zombies, wereskags, more zombies, some more zombies, fixed a claptrap-

MORDECAI: I didn't even know that thing was there, man. How did you hear him?

ROLAND: I have a program on my echo looking for claptrap distress signals.

[brief silence]

LILITH: Is _that_ why we found seemingly every claptrap that was damaged on Pandora along our journey?

ROLAND: Yes, yes it is. Finally we entered the sawmill, killed a few more zombies, and found Ned. Ned himself wasn't a challenge… at first.

BRICK: I have seen ugly, my friends. But what he turned into… truly, words cannot express how vile he was.

MORDECAI: He was one _ugly_ motherfucker!

BRICK: That works too.

ROLAND: Once we 'killed' Ned he morphed into this weird mutant thing and went down into a hidden cave filled with blood. His mutant form was a much tougher fight. His hands had massive claw-blades on them, he could dive down into the blood and move incredibly fast, and his only weak point was his face, which kept moving constantly. It took a combination of Lilith's daze bullets, Brick's rockets blowing his arms off, my turret taking out his support zombies, and Mordy taking snapshots at his face that let us take him down.

LILITH: If we'd been any less badass than we are we probably wouldn't have survived.

MORDECAI: But we are, and we did. Suck it Zed, your zombie scheme failed pendejo!

[static of an incoming call]

ZED: Hey there Vault Hunters, how are you guys doing?

MORDECAI: Zed? You're alive?!

ZED: Of course I'm… okay, that's actually a fair question, we are on Pandora after all, but no worries, I'm fine. Fryestone has been nice and quiet after you all took care of the bandits for us. Listen, I was just calling because I wanted to ask you guys a favor. See, I hear that some trouble has started over in Jakobs Cove, where my brother Ned works. Now, I know he can take care of himself, he's plenty smart - and still has his medical license, not that I'm jealous - but I still worry about him, you know? Would you guys mind terribly if you go and check on him for me?

[long silence]

BRICK: Somebody better pick up that echo… because I FUCKING CALLED IT!

ROLAND: I'm signing off now. We have a long conversation ahead of us.


	16. Moxxi's Underdrome

Moxxi's Underdrome

ROLAND: Roland's log. Day 34 on Pandora. Today was a fun and challenging day. And nobody died! Well, except bandits, but nobody cares about them.

LILITH: Hey, uh, Roland? Do you know where Mordecai went?

ROLAND: I think he went to go talk with Moxxi, why?

LILITH: He's been gone for a while now. You think he's alright.

BRICK: Oh he's more than alright. He's getting down tonight.

LILITH: What do you mea- oh. Oooooooh. Well, uh… lucky him I guess.

ROLAND: I would warn him to be careful around her, but I think he knows. I should clarify who I'm talking about. Moxxi, who playfully calls herself 'Mad Moxxi', is a… very beautiful woman who has started up a trio of colosseum arenas that promises to be the best challenge on Pandora for any badasses looking to test themselves. Given we had nothing better to do and are certified world-saving badasses, we figured we should give it a shot. And unlike some of the less professional arena challenges we've done, this one is actually rather fun.

LILITH: She did a good job making it interesting instead of just throwing lots of guys with guns at us all at once. Isn't that right _Chuck?_

ROLAND: Screw him, Moxxi is a thousand times better as a host. And the rewards for completing each challenge is an advanced tech program support that is freely programmable, letting us custom develop new skills to use. And I have a few ideas on what to do for myself.

LILITH: [laughs ominously] Oh I have plans too…

BRICK: Lils, don't scare me like that. I already know how dangerous you are. I don't want to have nightmares of what you'll come up with.

LILITH: Oh? Think I'm dangerous Brick?

BRICK: You are the only one of us I could come to fear.

LILITH: I… will chose to take that as a compliment.

BRICK: It is.

ROLAND: I'm going to stay out of that one. Anyway, the way Moxxi made her challenges interesting is by mixing things up every so often. She has introduced a lot of tech programs to both her arenas and to the enemies, as well as a few temporary programs installed in our gear. Some of the programs will buff the bad guys, some will hamper us in some way, and others will alter the flow of the fighting. It's a good system… when she's not exploiting certain traits a bit too much.

LILITH: That vampire perk was a bit cruel, I think. Like, the feeling of it draining you is creepy as all hell. Plus it itches.

BRICK: Drawing blood without earning it urks me.

ROLAND: The arenas themselves were rather interesting as well. Hellburbia was a mishmash of different environments and locales. Angelic Ruins is mostly based on the Eridian Promatory near the Vault, and even has some guardians in it. No idea how she managed to get them in here. Last is the Gully, a multi-level arena that has high and low ends connected by some warp-portals. Overall, nice arenas, really enjoy them.

LILITH: What I want to know is where she's getting all the enemies she's filling these places up with.

ROLAND: The bandits are an easy enough answer. From what I recall she said she hired a bunch of bandits to fight in her arena, putting them in restricted access to the New-U system.

LILITH: Wait, so… you're saying we were killing the same bandits over and over again?

ROLAND: Yes, we were.

LILITH: Who would agree to do that?

BRICK: People desperate for money. And a chance to fight and die without actually staying dead.

LILITH: Eh, guess you have a point. But what about the bosses then?

ROLAND: That I'm less sure on, but from what I can tell she found a way to take their New-U applications, each of which was denied by the way, and turn those into actual accounts. Incidentally, that's why none of the bandit lords remembered us from before we got to the arenas. From what they remember, we never killed them.

LILITH: Huh. That's… kinda weird actually. And the animals?

ROLAND: Well, since animals can't be brought back by New-U stations, Moxxi has to breed those. Which is why she went for skags. There's never a shortage on skags.

LILITH: She really planned this all out, didn't she?

ROLAND: It's a clever system. Anyway, we took part in each challenge at least once, though apparently Moxxi is working on a much longer challenge we can take part in eventually, one that will name us the top badass on Pandora. Which I'd like to win.

LILITH: Yeah, no way. I'm totally winning that title.

BRICK: Challenge accepted.

[echo call comes in]

MORDECAI: Hey guys, whatchu talking about?

ROLAND: We were discussing who would win the top badass challenge. How about you?

MORDECAI: [laughs] Oh I'm not worried about that. I've won my own challenge over here…

MOXXI: Mordecai, come back over here. I'm not done for the night.

MORDECAI: Coming, babe! See you guys later, good night.

ROLAND: You too.

[call ends]

LILITH: Huh. Good for him.

BRICK: I'm jealous, but only a little.

ROLAND: I'm not. Moxxi is nice, but… she's not the woman I have my eye on.

LILITH: Oh? And who would that be?

ROLAND: Can't tell. It's a secret.

LILITH: Uh huh, sure. Look, as long as it isn't Tannis, I really don't care.

ROLAND: Yeah, no, definitely not her. She's…

BRICK: Crazy? Nutso?

ROLAND: Yes, but also just not my type anyway. I prefer a… fighter.

LILITH: Well that doesn't surprise me.

ROLAND: Anyway, I think that's all for tonight. Signing off.


	17. T-bone Junction

T-Bone Junction

[distant sounds of swearing in the background]

LILITH: Um… hi there… Roland's log. Lilith here. So… we're up in T-Bone Junction right now, and, uh… well… Okay, we're up shit creek without a paddle at the moment.

MOREDCAI: Man, I ain't never heard Roland swear that much. I don't think I even know what language some of those curses are.

BRICK: I am learning so much, and it is glorious.

LILITH: Right, so, I guess I should explain. It's been a few weeks since the Jakobs Cove incident. We've mostly just been hanging out, doing missions and stuff, competing for the top prize in Moxxi's Underdrome WHICH I TOTALLY WON BY THE WAY!

MORDECAI: Hey, Moxxi picked who she picked, Lils. No use complaining about it.

LILITH: Yeah, whatever! Anyway, we got a message asking us to come out to T-Bone Junction because something was happening out here. Next thing we know when we arrive we find out that the Crimson Lance, the guys who tried to open the Vault and kill us all, are planning to land an entire _army_ on Pandora to secure it, and their primary targets? Us. So yeah… not a good situation.

ROLAND: - with a goddamn skag!

MORDECAI: You, uh… you finished buddy?

ROLAND: [panting] Yes… I'm done. Lilith, you can hand me back my echo now.

LILITH: Here you go.

ROLAND: Thanks. Okay… so it's not all bad, thankfully. Turns out we have an ally to help us deal with the Lance this time. A defector, one of the Lance's Crimson Assassins, a team leader in fact. Goes by the name of Athena.

ATHENA: I thought I told you not to use my name in any communications.

ROLAND: This is a personal log, Athena, not something I plan on sharing with anyone. If the Lance were to get their hands on this we'd have much bigger problems. Like the fact that I'd be dead and likely locked out of the New-U System.

ATHENA: Very well, but I will hold you to that. Athena out.

MORDECAI: Man, is she always that serious?

ROLAND: Crimson Assassins are raised from birth to do one job and one job only for the Lance; follow orders and kill targets. They don't have much in the way of social skills as a result.

LILITH: That sucks.

ROLAND: Compared to some of the other things the Lance gets up to, it's surprisingly tame. Anyway, she left the Lance in time to warn us of what's coming, and we'll be working with her to cripple their invasion plans and give Pandora a fighting chance against what's coming. But first, we had to rescue Athena after she got captured by bandits.

BRICK: Bandit prisoners.

ROLAND: I'll get to that. Anyway, to give a brief rundown of what we did today, when we arrived Scooter asked us to help him gather parts for a new vehicle, called the Monster, which should have enough armor to withstand fire from the Lance long enough for us to do some damage back to them. While we did that a local asked us to take care of the spy drones hanging around T-Bone Junction, which was easy enough once I calibrated my echo to localize their radio sources.

LILITH: Hey… are we gonna talk about that shrine thing I found down in the lower levels of the junction?

MORDECAI: I don't know, do you want to talk about it?

LILITH: I feel like I should, but at the same time I really don't want to.

ROLAND: Let's not. That's a bit too personal and creepy to discuss in a recording. Anyway, once the Monster was complete Scooter sent us to go meet with Moxxi at her bar down in the Deep Fathoms, but to get there we had to break through a Crimson Lance blockade.

MORDECAI: Are the elemental troopers new?

ROLAND: Somewhat. I remember there were plans on the books for implementing the idea, but nobody had gotten around to it when I left. The ones we fought at the blockade were all shock elemental, so our shields took a serious battering the whole time. Luckily we all had enough healing techs available to counteract the damage.

MORDECAI: Your scorpio turret is a life-saver man. Literally.

ROLAND: You're welcome. Once we pushed through the blockade we got a message from the leader of the Crimson Lance division coming to the planet. My old C.O. General Knoxx.

LILITH: You know… he seems like a nice guy. I mean, relatively speaking. What's he doing with the Lance?

ROLAND: He's a career man, been with them all his life. And while yes, he is more reasonable - by which I mean practical - than most of the Lance, he's not a good person. He's done his fair share of war crimes too. He's just more polite about it.

BRICK: I like him. I want to share a drink with him before I punch his teeth out.

ROLAND: We made our way to the Fathoms and met up with Moxxi, but unfortunately we were too late. Bandits had broken in and ambushed the pair of them, capturing Athena and taking her off to the north to be held hostage. Apparently Moxxi knows the guy who runs the prison where they took her, an ex-husband of hers named Mister Shank.

LILITH: Sounds like a swell guy. Also, did any of you guys know Moxxi was Scooter's mom?

MORDECAI: That still blows me away man. Moxxi doesn't look nearly old enough to be his mom.

MOXXI: Ah, thanks for the compliment, sugar.

MORDECAI: Anytime babe.

ROLAND: Anyway… Scooter gave us access to a suped up version of the Runner, which he calls the Racer now, which Moxxi said would let us access the prison out in the Sunken Sea. We had to break through two more blockades on the way out there, the first made up of pyro troopers and the second of corrosive troopers, as well as fight through a long forward operating base set in the tunnels along the road. Lots and lots and lots of Lance to kill.

BRICK: So much boom, so much glory. I'm enjoying this.

LILITH: Hey, Roland, what's the deal with these energy core things that Marcus is having us gather?

ROLAND: I'm not sure. They're different from the power cores that I used during my time with the Lance. Have different effects as well. Now, once we arrived at the Sunken Sea, we didn't immediately head out for the prison. We had a few other tasks to do first.

LILITH: Always more to do, always people to help.

MORDECAI: Always money to earn.

BRICK: Always stuff to kill. We live a good life.

LILITH: You know, I kinda agree.

ROLAND: We were asked, by Mister Shank, ironically enough, to go blow up a power line harvester that some bandits were using to steal power from the prison. I actually considered not doing this one, since the prison having low power could be a boon when we assault it, but I was convinced to do it because one, Shank was offering absurdly good money for an easy task, and two, I didn't think the tactical advantage was going to be that substantial.

LILITH: Spoilers, it wasn't.

BRICK: Lils, what did I tell you about spoilers?!

LILITH: It was a joke Brick!

ROLAND: We also went around killing more bandit patrols, because of course we did, and dealt with a supermassive drifter named Skyscraper. Oh, I should mention about drifters, they're large insect like creatures that walk through the sea-sands and spit gobs of acid at anything that gets too close. And they are _terrifying_.

MORDECAI: It's cause of how quiet they are man! I swear, every other animal on this planet you can hear coming from meters away, but the drifters are dead silent! It's creepy as hell!

ROLAND: We also found this friendly midget in a shack fishing for, well, fish. And no, he wasn't grenade fishing either.

BRICK: Peasant, doing it the boring way.

ROLAND: He was pretty chill for a midget, asked us if we could turn some pump valves to give him access to some purple juice that flows through the region. I know better by now than to ask where the juice comes from, so we went and did what he asked. Turns out all the other midgets in the area had the same idea and were defending the pumps with their lives.

MORDECAI: So you're not the least bit curious what this purple juice is?

ROLAND: Not at all. At all. Anyway, once that was done we finally tried to break into the prison. The prison itself was up on a rock shelf about a hundred meters above the sand-floor, so Moxxi had us jump the prison walls in a racer off the roof of her first ex-husband's house. It was surprisingly epic.

LILITH: Yeah, especially with Brick hanging on the front bumper and jumping off onto a bruiser to tear his arms off. Brick, A+ for badassery.

BRICK: Thank you, you're too kind.

ROLAND: The prison itself wasn't that much different from assaulting any other bandit settlement, just with the bandits wearing prison clothes and chains instead of their outdoors gear. We found another claptrap, though this one wasn't damaged so much as locked in a wheel clamp, which I did not let Brick try to remove by using his grenades.

BRICK: It would have been fine. We could have just fixed him up like all the other claptraps we repaired.

ROLAND: Ha ha, no. Anyway, we made our way through until we met Mister Shank in the showers and killed him. He had an unusually strong shield and was using Athena's teleporter to make the fight tricky, but between the four of us he really didn't stand a chance.

LILITH: Moxxi actually got really sad when she found out we killed him. I guess being ex-s for that long didn't take away all the attraction from when they were together.

ROLAND: From there freeing Athena didn't take much longer. We gave her back her teleporter and she warped out of the prison. Though I'm surprised she had enough range to go all the way back to T-Bone in one trip.

ATHENA: Doing so requires precise knowledge of power requirements, distance calculation, and careful consideration of necessity. In this case, I couldn't risk being found anywhere along the way to the Junction, so I had to go straight there. As it is I overloaded my teleporter and it will require several days to be repaired.

ROLAND: Ah, that explains a few things. Anyway, once she was free we left the prison after freeing the claptrap.

MORDECAI: Who got himself caught in a magnet trap only a few minutes later.

ROLAND: I wanted to get him out, but the others said I'd done enough, and he was in prison for a reason, or something like that. We left the prison by jumping off the broken road in a monster, then drove back along the roadway towards T-Bone. We did pause along the way though to deal with a rumor the friendly bandit told us about, and we found out it was true…

LILITH: WHO IN THE FUCK OF IT THOUGHT BRINGING SLEDGE BACK TO LIFE WITH A TURRET FOR A HEAD WAS A GOOD IDEA?!

MORDECAI: Midgets?

LILITH: EVEN FOR THEM, THIS SHIT IS FUCKED GUYS!

BRICK: I have seen many things in my life, and killed most of them. And that was in the top five most disturbing things I've ever killed. Just below the Destroyer.

ROLAND: [sighs] Yes, it was Sledge, or rather what used to be Sledge, with a gatling turret in place of his head. I have no idea how they made this bastardization of cyber-necromancy to work, but they did, and we killed it. Thank the Angel for that.

LILITH: Look, guys, I'm a nice girl, you know? I want to do nice things, help people out, all that stuff. BUT I SERIOUSLY WANT TO MURDER EVERYONE WHO HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS RIGHT NOW, WHAT THE FUCK!?

ROLAND: Lilith, I'm pretty sure we already slaughtered all the midgets responsible when we were clearing the pumps. Relax. Justice, such as it is, has already been served.

LILITH: [deep breaths] Okay… okay… I'ma… I'm going to go over there and just… chill now.

MORDECAI: Man, I wish ice element weapons existed. She needs one right now.

BRICK: I heard they're working on that up on Elphis.

MORDECAI: Seriously? That's cool. Heh.

BRICK: Heh.

ROLAND: Anyway, we're back in T-Bone now. We're resting here for the night after rescuing Athena. Tomorrow we're going to get to work on our plan to ruin the Lance's campaign here on Pandora by blowing up all of their weapons and gear. After we've had a chance to loot it for ourselves.

BRICK: Hells yeah.

ROLAND: This is Roland, signing off.


	18. The Crimson Armory

The Crimson Armory

[sounds of guns being armed and shields whirring]

ROLAND: Alright, we all ready?

LILITH: Just about. Give me a few minutes to refill my ammo.

MORDECAI: Same. Need more pistol bullets.

ROLAND: Alright, well, while you do that, I'll summarize what happened on my log.

LILITH: K. Shout if you need us.

ROLAND: Roland's log. We're here at the Crimson Armory, about to take on General Knoxx. A lot of stuff happened since yesterday so I'll be quick. Today started with Athena laying out a plan to break into the armory and blow up all of the Lance's munitions and weapons before the invasion force could land so that their invasion would be crippled or outright canceled. In order to get in to the armory though we needed the codes for the backdoor, which Athena was aware of but didn't know the details to. We searched the Lance FOB on the roadway and found a recording saying that a copy of the codes was left at the Pandoran World's Largest Bullet exhibit.

BRICK: Meh, it's big, but not that big. Now the bullet on Titania 27, now THAT'S a big bullet.

ROLAND: I'll take your word for it. Either way, we got the codes, killing a couple of infamous Lance captains along the way, which was cathartic. When we got back to Athena with the codes, she gave us the detonator she made and we were ready to break into the armory. In order to reach the armory we had to activate the light bridge in the fortification in the Deep Fathoms, since the Lance blew up the highway that would normally serve as the connection.

BRICK: Wish I'd seen those explosions. I'm sure they were very impressive.

ROLAND: When we got to the Road's End, we were asked by Athena to do two things: kill Commander Ajax, which I was more than happy to agree to, and to gather recordings of Knoxx's communications with the high command of the Lance. The results we found were… enlightening.

LILITH: Hey, is it really true that the Admiral Knoxx was reporting to is five years old?

ROLAND: It honestly wouldn't surprise me.

MORDECAI: Roland, how in the hell does stuff like that happen?

ROLAND: Like Knoxx said, nepotism. The higher ups in the Lance are as corrupt as you can get, and do whatever they like and damn the consequences. They don't think like we do. They think that what they want has to happen because they want it. And so if some corporate bigwig's son said he wanted to be admiral then he gets to be admiral, even if he isn't even in school yet.

LILITH: That's… how is Atlas still running?

ROLAND: Inertia, mostly. If Atlas ever loses control of the tech advantage that puts them on top they'll almost certainly collapse. And good riddance to them, I say. Can't imagine a corporation that could be worse than them. Anyway, we gathered the logs, which showed that Knoxx was getting increasingly frustrated with his idiot bosses, to the point that Knoxx has apparently quit the Lance himself. Unfortunately he still wants to kill us, probably for getting him sent here to begin with.

LILITH: I sure wish we could find a way to get him on our side. He seems like he could really do some good.

ROLAND: It's too late, Lils. He's given up. He's a sane man who is stuck on Pandora. And the more sane you are the sooner this planet breaks you down.

MORDECAI: Well hell, why haven't you broken yet Roland?

ROLAND: Heh… who said I was sane? Let's get this done.

[a few minutes of walking, followed by the sound of an elevator rising]

ROLAND: Hello Knoxx.

KNOXX: Hold that thought, Roland.

[long sequence of weapons unfolding from containers]

MORDECAI: Ooooooh crap.

BRICK: That's a lot of boom…

KNOXX: [deep sigh] Well… this is just inappropriate timing. I got tired of waiting and was hoping to be dead before you got here. Can't _stand_ this place.

ROLAND: I know the feeling.

KNOXX: But, since you are here, I'ma offer you a deal.

[weapons retracting]

KNOXX: If you best me in this fight, which admittedly seems likely, maybe you could do me a favor and just blow the whole planet up. Kill everyone. That's the fairest thing to do.

LILITH: What?! But… I don't…

ROLAND: Told yah. And no way we're doing that, Knoxx. Most of the planet may be insane and/or murderous, but there are good innocent people living here.

KNOXX: Hah. Innocent. I remember when I believed that lie too. But that's fine, I don't care anyway. Let's just end this.

ROLAND: Yes. Let's. Open fire!

[overlapping bullet noises, explosions, and shouting]

MORDECAI: Devestators and medics coming out of deployments zones!

ROLAND: Focus on the medics, I'll take the mechs. Lilith, Brick, draw Knoxx's fire!

BRICK: Raaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

LILITH: [phaseblast] Over here Knoxx!

KNOXX: Stand still you pale-skinned freak!

LILITH: Make me!

MORDECAI: Medics are down! Switching to corrosive!

ROLAND: Melt Knoxx's armor! Brick, get ready to unleash the beast!

BRICK: Ahahahahahahaha!

KNOXX: I see you, sniper!

[explosion]

MORDECAI: Crap!

ROLAND: Mordy, hold on! [turret deploys] Stay in its healing range!

MORDECAI: Just need one good shot!

LILITH: Eat acid, Knoxx!

[loud stomp interrupted by phaseblast]

BRICK: Come to papa!

KNOXX: What in the he- GET OFF MY FACE!

BRICK: BOOOOOM!

[explosion followed by screams]

ROLAND: Almost done! Mordy, finish it!

MORDECAI: Adios general!

[loud bang, followed by a crash]

KNOXX: Ooooooow. That hurt.

ROLAND: For what it's worth, General, I'm glad you see how fucked up the Lance really is.

KNOXX: Yeah… came too late though. Ah well… that's life I guess. Hey… do me a favor.

ROLAND: What?

KNOXX: You ever see his underage ass… tell the Admiral I hate him.

ROLAND: … No promises.

KNOXX: Yeah… that figures. Uuuuuuugh.

LILITH: Huh. Guess he really was an asshole.

MORDECAI: But a friendly one.

BRICK: What are we wasting time down here for? We've got an armory to loot!

ATHENA: Excellent work killing Knoxx. Now that he's dead, I don't have to disguise my communications anymore. Enter the code and expose the munitions so you can plant the detonator.

ROLAND: We're on it.

[few minutes of walking]

LILITH: Wait, did they seriously keep this place secure using a color code system?

ROLAND: It's the Lance.

LILITH: I know, I know, but still…

[code is entered, door opens]

MORDECAI: This is it guys. Biggest source of loot on Pandora!

BRICK: Here we go, here we go, here we go!

ROLAND: Guys, wait, I'm getting something on my radar.

LILITH: What is it?

ROLAND: I… I see a… hole in the floor?

LILITH: Where?

ROLAND: Right here. Let me just… my foot just went through the plate.

MORDECAI: What in the heck is going on here?

ROLAND: I think that whoever was contracted to build this place made a mistake with the building and ended up with a hole in the floor, then covered it up with a hologram to hide their mistake.

MORDECAI: Wait… does that mean we can get into the armory without blowing the place up?

ROLAND: Athena did say we only had a few minutes to loot before we had to explode everything because security would be tripped and the rest of the Lance would come running to defend their stockpile. But if we go in like this…

LILITH: Security won't go off?

ROLAND: I believe so.

BRICK: Heh. Heh heh. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

ROLAND: Alright Vault Hunters… time to loot. Roland signing off.


	19. Cleaning Up

Cleaning Up

ROLAND: Roland's log, Day… oh who cares anymore? It's been a few days since we raided the armory and killed Knoxx, and plenty has happened since then, mostly mopping up the remnants of the invasion force and fixing a few more issues in the area.

MORDECAI: So much loot man! So much loot!

ROLAND: And we got to raid the armory two more times, using the same trick we did before. We're very happy at the moment.

BRICK: I've maxed out my storage at Moxxi's weapon bank, because there's so much good shit I just can't carry it all!

ROLAND: Right, so, first thing we did after raiding the armory is finish blowing it up like Athena wanted us to. To our surprise though no more Lance showed up.

LILITH: I guess killing their general and blowing up all their stuff spooked them so hard they gave up.

ROLAND: Nearest I can tell, she's right. On the way back to T-Bone we stopped by one of the broken road-blocks to doodle on the wanted posters they had there. That was fun. Also to make fun of the assassin teams that all failed to kill us. I forgot to mention them, didn't I?

MORDECAI: They weren't much of a threat, so I don't think it mattered. No offense Athena.

ATHENA: None taken. I never developed a connection with the other teams, so I do not care much that they are dead.

MORDECAI: Brutal but honest.

ROLAND: When we got back we thanked Athena for her help, and she thanked us for our help. Thanks all around. Then Marcus called us up and said that he'd bought the remains of the armory for super cheap and found that there were more weapons stored in there we didn't get to beforehand. Naturally we wanted at them, but he wanted us to go kill a bunch more Crimson Lance before he'd let us inside. And as luck would have it, the Lance were running a recruitment drive out near the Sunken Sea.

LILITH: So, question about that… why did they just let us in? They had to have known who we are, right?

ROLAND: Oh they did, but they were doing it intentionally. They wanted to lure us in with the promise of a reward in hopes they could overwhelm us with sheer numbers and get revenge for the damage we caused. Not their best plan.

MORDECAI: We butchered them, man! Dozens of them all at the same time! It was epic!

BRICK: I blew up an APC using the gas tank of one of their badasses. I am accomplished.

ROLAND: Once we exhausted their supply of troops they gave up and forced us to go away, but we'd already killed plenty of them to satisfy Marcus, so we went down to raid the armory again. On the way there we were asked by Dahl, of all people, to plant spying equipment on a Lance outpost's radio gear so they could track their messages. Probably planning for a counter invasion or something, I don't know. To get up to the outpost though we had to restart the gondola that leads up to the bluff tops, and for some reason the midgets had stolen that and hid it amongst a bunch of trash.

LILITH: I swear, I hate midgets now. For so many reasons.

MORDECAI: Welcome to the club, Lils.

BRICK: We've got hats and t-shirts.

LILITH: Wait, seriously?

BRICK: Yep. Though all we have in your size is a crop top

LILITH: Oh. Of course.

ROLAND: While we were rampaging through midget territory we found a signal transponder that connects to the dashboard of a Lancer, which Mordecai realized might allow us to find some of the… 'mythical' Lost Lewts of the initial Lance invasion force which took over Pandora from Dahl years ago.

MORDECAI: You know what else I hate? Drifters! Those damn bastards would leave us alone while we were searching for the chests!

ROLAND: Their acid did serious damage to the Lancer APC, but luckily Lilith in her Monster was able to blow them away. Meanwhile Brick was doing a job for Moxxi. What was that job again, Brick?

BRICK: Do a loop-de-loop in the Racer on a loop ramp the bandits set up.

LILITH: Why did they set that up at all though?

BRICK: Everybody wants to be badass, Lils, even the bad guys.

LILITH: Eh, true enough.

ROLAND: After we located all the lost chests we continued on to the armory, which was again being guarded by Lance. Apparently they were defaulting to guarding their owned locations without a CO to guide them. Fighting through them was easy, barely a challenge. After that, we got to loot the armory in full a second time, with Marcus none the wiser about our little trick.

[collective cheer]

ROLAND: The next day Marcus told us there was even more gear in the armory, this time from Lance literally selling him their remaining stock in return for a promise from us _not_ to go raiding them again. Then Marcus told us he'd let us raid them again after we went up north to clear out the remaining midgets and bandits. That took most of the day to do, mostly because there were so many midgets spread out all over the place up there.

LILITH: My hatred has not decreased.

MORDECAI: Nor mine.

BRICK: I like stomping on their heads. They explode like grapes.

LILITH: Ew.

ROLAND: While on the way down to the armory for our final looting Moxxi called us up for a quick favor to remove some graffiti bandis were putting up making fun of her. Though given the things they were saying, I think Moxxi wanted the stuff gone so she could be the one to market it for herself.

MORDECAI: Yeah, she's classy like that.

LILITH: Uh huh. Classy. That's definitely the word I'd choose.

MORDECAI: Shut up, Lilith.

LILITH: Make me lover boy.

ROLAND: The final raid on the armory was almost sad. There were so few Lance left they barely put up a fight. Some of them even surrendered to us outright when they saw us, which we didn't know how to deal with at first.

BRICK: I wanted to punch 'em, just a little bit for being douchebags, you know?

LILITH: Not the most constructive thing in the world, Brick.

BRICK: I don't construct, Lils, I destruct. With malice.

ROLAND: I spoke with the ranking officer of the lot, a lieutenant named Reiss, and just told him to take his squad to New Haven and ask for sanctuary there. There was a brief confusion as they thought I meant the city of Sanctuary, but they figured it out eventually. After that was one more raid on the armory, with all the precious loot that entails, and we had done everything T-Bone Junction has to offer. From here, I think we'll take some time off and enjoy our loot and money. Technically speaking none of us ever need to work again a day in our lives.

MORDECAI: Yeah, but where's the fun in that?

ROLAND: True enough. This is Roland, signing out.


	20. Tartarus Station

Tartarus Station

ROLAND: Hyperion, what in the fuck were you thinking?

LILITH: You assume they were thinking at all.

MORDECAI: I told you guys! I told you time and again! NEVER TRUST A CLAPTRAP!

LILITH: Give it a rest, Mordy, we know. You've been saying it since we arrived.

MORDECAI: Because I was right, damnit!

ROLAND: Yes, we acknowledge that, due to unforeseen circumstances, your weird paranoia around claptraps was proven accurate. Now please shut up about it.

MORDECAI: Oh fine. But I'm still right.

ROLAND: Right, so, explanation time. We are here at Tartarus Station up near Fryestone because apparently some Hyperion higher up wanted to muscle in on Pandora now that Atlas is reeling, but they for some reason thought that getting rid of us was a key factor in doing that. Which… why? What did we ever do to upset Hyperion? Why would they want to get rid of us?

LILITH: Maybe they think we're dangerous, since we kinda took on a whole army of Lance and came away laughing with all their stuff.

ROLAND: Okay, that's a fair point, but still, was this really the way they thought they could take us out? That method, by the way, was to hijack the Fryestone claptrap we met a month ago and reprogram it to try and get us killed. Get bandits to attack us.

LILITH: Which is a joke, since we've killed thousands of bandits at this point.

ROLAND: Trying to make us look bad around the community.

MORDECAI: Which is hilarious given we're the only reason most of them are still alive, plus all the things we did to help them out on a smaller level.

ROLAND: And point out to the authorities that we are a disturbance of the peace and a threat to the environment. Which… first of all, what authorities? This is Pandora, there is no law out here. Second of all, the environment is a _threat to us_. We're just defending ourselves. Third of all, who is going to listen to a claptrap of all things trying to badmouth us?

BRICK: Whoever came up with this idea is a real jack-ass.

ROLAND: No kidding. Anyway, while the claptrap was utterly ineffectual at even bothering us, for all the reasons I just highlighted, he _did_ notice all of the times that claptraps were getting hurt, killed, or scraped around Pandora, and decided to do something about it.

MORDECAI: And so the claptrap decides to lead a revolution of his fellow claptraps. Just like I knew would happen someday.

LILITH: Okay, Mordy, buddy, you have a problem with claptraps.

MORDECAI: And now they have a problem with me, what's your point?

ROLAND: Right, so, Hyperion's plan backfired on them spectacularly, particularly since they were the only major user of claptraps on the planet. And when they found their soldiers couldn't handle the threat themselves, guess who they hired to solve the problem?

LILITH: Irony at its finest.

ROLAND: And now we're up at Tartarus Station to deal with the leading claptrap, who was reprogrammed to call himself the 'Interplanetary Ninja Assassin Claptrap' by the way, and take apart his operations. When we first arrived at the warp point we were up at the radio station, and in a shack near the station we found Tannis, who moved out here at some point to work with Hyperion in studying the Vault key. She asked us to go to the Hyperion Dump to gather some claptrap parts for a project she is working on. The dump had some bandits in it, shocker, and so we killed them as we gathered the parts. We were also picking up some mildly used tires for Marcus, who wanted to replace the ones he has on his bus. Given half the dump's contents were tires, it was both easier and harder than one might expect. Then we ran into a huge fire fight between the Hyperion soldiers and a horde of claptraps. The soldiers were doing alright at first… until they fired on us.

LILITH: Hey, that's their fault. They should have known better than to pick a fight with some badasses.

BRICK: Their armor looks stupid. So I broke it.

ROLAND: From there the fight devolved into a chaotic mess of us killing everything that wasn't us. The Hyperion troops are… decent I think. About as skilled as your average Lanceman, but they didn't last long once they made us their enemy. The claptraps though are very fragile, and their shields aren't very powerful. There were a lot of them though. Some that punch, some that slice, some with shotguns and rifles, and some that decided that blowing up in your face is the way to go. Screw those ones.

LILITH: They come out of nowhere, I swear! I had to keep my phasewalk on a hair trigger to get away from them.

BRICK: They died to make their boom, which I respect, but they cheat to kill with the boom, which is annoying.

ROLAND: Anyway, once all the enemies were dead we decided to collect a whole bunch of parts for Tannis, who was thrilled at the haul and paid us for it… only to turn around as say it wasn't enough and asked us to collect a bunch more. Which, given the reason we were here in the first place, wasn't much of an issue. After we spoke with her we headed down into the town proper, where we met with Mister Blake, some corporate officer of Hyperion who is working with us to help take care of the claptrap revolution.

LILITH: You know, I expected him to be creepier. Like, he looks menacing on the surface, but he's really not all that bad.

MORDECAI: Yeah, seems like a reasonable guy. We don't like him, he doesn't like us, we work together, it's pretty chill.

ROLAND: The first order of business was to go to the power plant to restore power to the town so we could lower the bridges leading to the other areas around the station. Before we headed down to Sander's Gorge to do that we were asked to reset some defense turrets along the town wall so that the town was safe from approach by bandits. That was a simple enough matter of finding the power cells, plugging them into their circuits and resetting the programming. Brick did something else, but he refuses to tell us what.

BRICK: [evil laughter]

LILITH: That's disturbing.

ROLAND: Yeah, no kidding. Anyway, we headed down to the gorge, after getting a message from Marcus asking us to collect some spices and rak meat for him. Never tried rak meat, but I can't imagine it's as good as skag.

MORDECAI: It's not normally, but in the hands of a master chef it can be really good. Actually tastes a lot like chicken when properly prepared.

LILITH: I don't believe you.

MORDECAI: I didn't either before I tried it.

ROLAND: We made our way through the gorge slowly, since our echo maps are… very poor in the warrens and tunnels that make up the place, but eventually we made our way through to the power station. And who should meet us there than General Knoxx himself.

LILITH: I'm guessing the INAC somehow managed to get a hold of Knoxx's New-U data and used that to resurrect him?

ROLAND: Almost certainly. Oh, I should mention, Knoxx was being mind controlled like nearly every bandit and Hyperion soldier we've met in the area aside from the dump. Apparently INAC developed a mind control device which hijacks the body's nervous system and overrides the brain with programming that the claptraps want to implant in people. The result is that bandits, Hyperion troops, even animals have been taken over and forced to fight for the claptrap army. Knoxx was no different. But he did have enough freedom to tell us to kill him again. Which we did.

LILITH: He was a lot less dangerous this time without his supporting mecha and medics. Especially with Brick keeping the claptraps off us while we fought him.

BRICK: They're punching bags made of metal. Softer than I'm used to punching.

ROLAND: Once Knoxx was dead again we activated the power plant, while INAC called us to gloat, saying we were far from victory and he would win and yadda yadda. We went back to the station, dropping off Marcus' food before reporting to Mister Blake. The next step in taking down the revolution was heading to the Dividing Faults Factory and shutting it down, since INAC had retooled it to start churning out claptraps. Marcus had another task for us while we were there, to collect bobbleheads of all things for his shop, and the Station managers also asked us to deal with the bandits in D-Fault who had managed to survive the claptrap assaults on them. Brick did another thing that he still refuses to explain to us.

BRICK: [menacing chuckling]

LILITH: Brick, if those things you did come back to bite us, I'm going to be very annoyed with you.

BRICK: Relax. We're not gonna see anything from it. Trust me.

LILITH: I'm not sure that I do.

ROLAND: We went to the factory and fought our way through the army of claptraps and their converted bandits and troopers. The bobbleheads were spread around the facility, and the D-Fault bandits were off to the side of the factory. The leader of the bandits there was literally named D. Fault, and seemed oddly proud of the fact that he and his band had survived being converted. I would feel bad about killing them after all the effort they went through to survive, but… they're bandits.

LILITH: Yeah, bandits don't really get much sympathy with all the crap they pull, no matter who is abusing them.

BRICK: Especially us.

ROLAND: When we reached the factory entrance we were met by Ned crawling out of a garbage bin, so clearly INAC resurrected him as well. Not that he was much of a threat in his normal form. The factory floor itself was _crawling_ with claptraps, so we had to liberally use our grenades and rockets to clear them all out, destroying most of the assembly line in the process. Just to be sure though we shut down the coolant pumps too, by blowing them up. INAC called us to cover up his worries with more gloating, but it clearly wasn't working.

MORDECAI: After everything we've fought and killed, the idea of a regular old claptrap being intimidating is… just no. It ain't happening.

ROLAND: That was the last thing we did for today. Tomorrow we will continue our work to take care of INAC by going after a device which will rewire him and shut down all of the programming changes it introduced into the claptraps and mind-controlled people and creatures, ending the revolution in one fell swoop. So that'll be fun. Roland, signing off.


	21. Fryestone Again

Fryestone… Again

ROLAND: So… we had an eventful wake up call this morning. In the form of a bandit raid rolling into the station in an armored train.

BRICK: Best. Morning. Ever.

LILITH: You know, in hindsight, that was a really bad idea on their part. Cause we aren't the only people living here. And most of the people who dare to 'vacation' on Pandora are badasses like us. And they weren't any happier about being woken up by gunfire then we were.

ROLAND: Clearing out the attackers took a while, but that was mostly because everyone was fighting for the right to kill them first. Anyway, once they were dealt with we headed off to Scorched Snake Canyon to find the reprogramming device, called WIRED. Which is actually wireless… because the marketing team at Hyperion are idiots.

MORDECAI: I mean, they're the ones that sell a legendary submachine gun with the title of 'The Bitch'.

LILITH: Hey, don't you be mocking my Bitch! It's my precious baby and it is a good gun with a good name, you hear me!

MORDECAI: You are weirdly protective of that gun, Lils.

LILITH: What can I say, I like smgs. A lot.

BRICK: About as much as I like rocket launchers.

ROLAND: Anyway, the canyon was a lengthy but simple journey. We fought skags, spider ants, rak and claptraps in varying orders until we reached the facility warehouse where the WIRED device was stored. And who should we meet while we were but a resurrected Steele.

LILITH: You know, you probably shouldn't have been laughing at her so much. It made her really want to kill you.

ROLAND: Don't care, it was just too funny. So, uh, to explain what I was laughing at, she was resurrected just like Knoxx and Ned, but… something about the way the Destroyer damaged her made it so that the hole it stabbed in her stomach remained when her body was restored. So the hole had to be covered up by metal plating.

MORDECAI: It was kinda funny, especially the way she was freaking out about it.

ROLAND: Anyway, since she was resurrected she lacked her siren powers, so she was easy to take down. Barely put up more of a fight than the Crimson Assassin teams did. Soon after we searched the workshop and got the WIRED device, which is still weirdly named. "Wireless Information Router Encoding Device." Heck, even Blake agreed the name was stupid.

LILITH: INAC thought it didn't matter at first because of the name, until we told him it was wireless. Even the bad guy who is weak to it thought it was stupid.

ROLAND: Anyway, on the way back we did another favor for Marcus, killing some skags and a rak hive to get materials for… cologne of all things.

MORDECAI: It's a good smell man, don't knock it. Moxxi likes it.

ROLAND: You remember that Marcus is Moxxi's 3rd husband, right?

MORDECAI: Doesn't mean I can't agree with his choice in cologne.

ROLAND: Okay then… either way I have no idea how the claptraps converted a rak hive, but they did, and that thing was even more of a bullet sponge than the living one we fought on the Trash Coast, but it wasn't much of a threat. We returned to Blake, who uploaded the reset protocol on to the WIRED and then sent us after INAC himself. We made our way to the Wayward Pass, which leads over the mountains to the Arid Badlands, and where INAC made a boss rush for us to deal with.

LILITH: Wait… you know what a boss rush is?

ROLAND: Yes, of course. I played a lot of Circle of Duty when I was with the Lance, so I'm familiar with the term.

LILITH: You're a _gamer_?

ROLAND: I mean yes… somewhat.

LILITH: I love you.

ROLAND: W-what?

LILITH: Roland, we should totally date some time.

ROLAND: What!?

MORDECAI: [uproarious laughter]

BRICK: About time you two hooked up.

ROLAND: I don't, you… What?

LILITH: Wait, were you shipping us?

BRICK: Just a little bit. Bit weird to do it with friends who aren't together… yet.

ROLAND: I… I can't deal with this now, let me finish the log.

LILITH: Yeah, we should do that.

ROLAND: Right, so, Wayward Pass. Boss Rush. We fought Knoxx, Undead Ned, and Steele in that order, and none of them were a significant challenge for us at this point. INAC tried to taunt us the whole way, but we mostly ignored him. Eventually we made it through the pass and arrived on the edge of Fryestone… when INAC was waiting for us.

MORDECAI: Okay, I'm not alone here when I ask _where in the holy fuck did he get that stupid mecha thing?_

LILITH: Yeah no, we need to ask that question. Who or what made that thing?

BRICK: Uh, guys? That's a standard issue Hyperion Assault Tank.

LILITH: Wait seriously?

BRICK: Yeah, nothing special about it. I've fought a couple before, they're nothing unique.

MORDECAI: Roland, is that true?

ROLAND: Yes, they've been around for a while now. The Lance tended to deal with them by gathering a squad of Lancers and tearing them apart at long range. They also have a significant weakness to corrosive weapons, which is why I recommended you use them.

LILITH: Well. Huh. That explains why it went down so easy.

ROLAND: Yeah, they're something of an outdated design at this point. Too much weakness to corrosive due to their size for the amount of armor and weight. Last I heard Hyperion is considering switching from treads to walkers in the future. More fitting for their operation type. Anyway, once the tank, which INAC tried to pass off as his 'mega form', was destroyed the claptrap himself went down pathetically easy. Then we activated the WIRED and he returned to his old, friendly, obnoxious self. I almost felt bad, given how scared INAC sounded as he was overwritten, but he was too dangerous to leave as he was, so it had to be done. Anyway, we stopped by in Fryestone to say hi to Zed and warped back to Tartarus Station to speak with Blake. Blake was… oddly happy that we had done the job, giving us access to Hyperion's… 'reward room'.

LILITH: Never before have I seen so many purple rarity weapons and gear in one place.

MORDECAI: There were multiple legendaries in there, guys! Like, a LOT of them!

BRICK: It was truly glorious. Like loot from a dream.

ROLAND: So yeah, now all of us have probably the best gear we could reasonably ask for in doing… pretty much anything at this point. The only way to get better stuff would be to invent it at this point.

MORDECAI: GUYS! HOLY SHIT! IF YOU CLOSE THE CHESTS AND REOPEN THEM THEY HAVE MORE LOOT!

LILITH: Wait what?!

MORDECAI: No shit, look!

ROLAND: Okay, I'm going to sign off now. I may have the best stuff I could ever ask for, but that's no reason not to ask again. Roland's log, signing off.


	22. Crawmerax's Lair

Crawmerax's Lair

ROLAND: Okay, so, fun fact: I've never died before. Despite having a New-U account since I joined the Lance, having hacked it when I left to make sure they couldn't just shut me out, I've never actually needed it. And today, I have died _5 times_ trying to kill this fucking thing.

LILITH: Guys, I'm really sorry, honestly. I mean, it's really not fair that I've gotten away without dying so far.

MORDECAI: Hey, don't apologize for that, it's good to have somebody consistently up there to distract it while we go up to shoot at it.

LILITH: I still feel bad though. I mean, watching you get thrown off the cliff is one thing, but seeing the craws bite you in half…

ROLAND: Unfortunately enough, I've seen worse. Okay, time to explain what happened. It's been a few weeks since we defeated INAC and got paid for our efforts, and not much has happened since then until yesterday, where we got a message from T-Bone Junction that a massive and dangerous creature had shown up and somebody there dared us to go after it. We were going to ignore it, since the creature was apparently unable to escape from its prison. Then we were told that rumor has it the creature either has within it or protects _Pearlescent weapons._

LILITH: I mean, I never heard of those before the guy in the quest description mentioned it. Are they really that special?

MORDECAI: Lilith, Pearls are to Legnedaries what Legendaries are to vendor trash. They're the guns made for the top 1% of the top 1%. Each and every one of them is custom made, with cutting edge tech that makes them totally unique from anything else in the galaxy. You think stuff like a Volcano or a Hellfire breaks the mold? Try an smg which fires shock, acid, _and_ normal rounds all at once! Or a shotgun that fires grenades _which are affected by your grenade mod_! They are literally worth dying for, which is why I stuck around after the first death.

ROLAND: Exactly. Anyway, the name of this beast is Crawmerax the Invincible, and he is apparently what the craw worms we've seen across Pandora used to be before the seas dried up in this hemisphere. Which is a terrifying thought, given how powerful just this one beast is. Crawmerax is as big or bigger than the Hyperion Assault Tank was, and is much better armored. It's practically bullet and explosive proof across its armor, and corrosive doesn't melt it at all. The only way to damage it is to hit it in its energy points at the joints, on its back under its shell, and to shoot out its eye. It also has a whole hive of children serving with it, each of which is only weak to one element, meaning we had to keep a shock, corrosive, and fire weapon on hand at all times in case one of them snuck up on us.

MORDECAI: He's fucking fast too! Way faster than he looks! And he fires huge goobs of acid which can eat through shields like they're not even there! It's a nightmare facing this guy.

BRICK: He is a Titan, a true beast of majesty and power. I am honored to have taken part in killing it. Also, shit was badass as fuck, man.

ROLAND: Yes, despite his incredible power, we did eventually kill it. It took all day, multiple deaths for everyone except Lilith-

LILITH: Sorry!

ROLAND: And about 10,000 rounds of ammunition from every gun we have, but eventually we killed him. And if that doesn't make us the most badass people on Pandora, I'll eat my damn rifle. Still, despite all the pain and monetary cost, it was certainly worth it. Because behind his arena hidden in an alcove… we found the mother load. Legendaries, Pearls, purples galore. It was even more beautiful than the Hyperion gift shop was.

[gun fires, lightning and acid explodes]

LILITH: Okay, I think I can get used to this.

MORDECAI: Oh yeah, now we're talking!

BRICK: [evil laughter] I'd like to see anything try to take us on now.

ROLAND: Yeah, I don't think there's much left in the galaxy that can threaten us at this point. But now that we've beaten the strongest challenge Pandora has to offer… I think it's time to take a break. Go on vacation somewhere.

MORDECAI: I'm gonna hang out with Moxxi in the Underdrome for a while, work on my high score in the arena.

BRICK: I shall go and challenge more bandit lords. Maybe find Hanz and Franz and get those two to finally listen to reason. Violently.

LILITH: That sounds fun. Hope you guys enjoy yourselves. As for us, Roland, I heard Elphis has some sweet bars we could check out.

ROLAND: Sounds like a plan. Alright, that's all for now. So long Pandora, and thanks for all the loot. This is Roland, signing off.


End file.
